152 Million In 2004 a Swiss paleontologist said
hundreds of dinosaur prints dating back this time had been
discovered in the Jura mountains in the northwest of Switzerland.
(AFP, 10/11/04)

14600BC-14100BC A canine jaw, dating to this time,
was found in Switzerland in 1873. Analysis in 2010 indicated the age
of the bone and proved humans were keeping dogs at this time.
(SFC, 8/4/10, p.A2)

3063BC In 2010 Swiss archaeologists in
Zurich said they have unearthed a 5,000-year-old door that may be
one of the oldest ever found in Europe. Using tree rings to
determine its age, they believed the door could have been made in
the year 3,063 BC, around the time that construction on Britain's
world famous Stonehenge monument began.
(AP, 10/20/10)

c45BC Colonia Julia Equestris, a veterans’ colony,
was founded in what is now Nyon, Switzerland. Nyon is derived from
the Celtic name Noviodunum.
(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.10)

c111AD A Roman amphitheater was built at Nyon. An
inscription at the site had a dedication to the emperor Trajan.
(AM, Jul/Aug ‘97 p.10)

287 Maurice (Mauritius), leader
of the legendary Roman Theban Legion in the 3rd century, was
believed executed at Agaunum, Switzerland, after refusing an order
by Roman Emperor Maximian to harass local Christians. Because of his
name and native land, St. Maurice had been portrayed as black ever
since the 12th century.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maximian)

563 A tsunami devastated
Geneva. It was generated by a massive rockfall on what was called
Mount Tauredunum.
(Econ, 11/3/12, p.79)

990 A set of instructions on
chess, the Versus de Scachis (Poem About Chess), emerged in
Switzerland about this time. The game had begun in India before the
6th century.
(Arch, 1/05, p.40)(Econ, 10/29/11, p.97)

1291 Aug 1, The Everlasting
League formed and became the basis of Swiss Confederation. The
people of the 3 small cantons (Uri, Schwyz and Unterwalden) formed a
co-operative pact called the Bundesbrief following the death of
Habsburg Emp. Rudolf I.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.6)

1347-1350 The Black Death: A Genoese trading post
in the Crimea was besieged by an army of Kipchaks from Hungary and
Mongols from the East. The latter brought with them a new form of
plague, Yersinia pestis. Infected dead bodies were catapulted into
the Genoese town. One Genoese ship managed to escape and brought the
disease to Messina, Sicily. The disease quickly became an epidemic.
It moved over the next few years to northern Italy, North Africa,
France, Spain, Austria, Hungary, Switzerland, Germany, the Low
countries, England, Scandinavia and the Baltic. There were lesser
outbreaks in many cities for the next twenty years. An estimated 25
million died in Europe and economic depression followed. In 2005
John Kelly authored “The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the
Black Death, the Most Devastating Plague of All Time."
(NG, 5/88, p.678)(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R42)(SSFC,
3/6/05, p.B1)(SFC, 10/13/11, p.A6)

1348 Nov 15, Rudolph of Oron, a
bailiff in Lausanne, wrote a letter to the Strasbourg
authorities in which he declared that certain Jews of Lausanne had
confessed to poisoning all the drinking wells in the Rhine Valley
that somehow selectively killed only Christians.
(http://tinyurl.com/maa4q7b)

1357 In Switzerland Konrad
Mueller killed Heinrich Stucki. To atone Mueller promised to always
pay to keep an eternal lamp lit. In 2013 a court in Glarus canton
ruled that the current farm owner no longer has to pay $76 each year
for oil and candles because Swiss mortgage reforms in the mid-19th
century made the practice invalid.
(SFC, 1/9/13, p.A2)

1365 Basel, Switzerland, was
wrecked by an earthquake.
(AP, 8/4/07)

1378 Sep 20, The election of
Robert of Geneva as anti-pope by discontented cardinals created a
great schism in the Catholic church.
(HN, 9/20/98)

1386 The counts of Habsburg
tried to reach their goals by military force but were again defeated
by Swiss forces at the battle of Sempach.
(http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/old-swiss-confederacy-1291.html)

1388 The counts of Habsburg
tried to reach their goals by military force but were again defeated
by Swiss forces at the battle of Naefels.
(http://history-switzerland.geschichte-schweiz.ch/old-swiss-confederacy-1291.html)

1444 Aug 26, In the Battle of
St. Jakob an der Birs, fought near Basel in Switzerland, a Swiss
force of some 1,600 soldiers stopped some 30,000 French mercenaries
on their way to relieve a siege of Zurich.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_St._Jakob_an_der_Birs)

1460 Apr 4, University of
Basle, Switzerland, formed.
(MC, 4/4/02)

1476 The Swiss overcame
Burgundy’s Charles the Bold at the Battle of Murten.
(SSFC, 5/26/02, p.C5)

1477 Jan 5, Swiss troops
defeated the forces under Charles the Bold of Burgundy at the Battle
of Nancy.
(HN, 1/5/99)

1478 The Swiss began annexing
the southern approaches to the strategic and lucrative St. Gothard
Pass over the Alps.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T4)

1513 The Swiss completed the
acquisition of the southern province of Ticino.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T4)

1515 Sep 13, King Francis of
France defeated the Swiss army under Cardinal Matthias Schiner at
Marignano, northern Italy. Switzerland was last involved in a war.
French armies defeated the Swiss and Venetians at the Battle of
Marignano and Milan fell to the French. Francis I conquered
Lombardy in northern Italy.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.11)(SFC, 6/7/96, p.A12)(HN,
9/13/98)

1515 Hans Holbein the Younger
arrived in Basel, the European center of book publishing. The city
in 1997 owned 340 prints by Holbein.
(WSJ, 6/24/97, p.A20)

1523 Hans Holbein completed the
first of several portraits of Erasmus in Basel. He also began the
design of 51 plates on the "Dance of Death," which reflected ideas
of the Reformation.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.12)(WSJ, 6/24/97, p.A20)

1531 Nov 23, Peace of Kappel
ended the second civil war in Switzerland.
(AP, 11/23/02)

1535 Oct 4, The 1st full
English translation of the Bible was printed in Switzerland. Miles
Coverdale’s translation of the Bible into English (from Dutch and
Latin) was the first complete version in English and was dedicated
to Henry VIII.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.15)(MC, 10/4/01)

1538 May 26, Geneva threw out
John Calvin and his zealots. Calvin was exiled from Geneva for three
years and lived in Strasbourg.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.15)(MC, 5/26/02)

1540 The pulmonary circulation
of the blood was discovered by Michael Servetus, a Spanish
theologian and physician. In 1553 he was burned at the stake in
Geneva for heresy.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.16)(WSJ, 9/18/02, p.D8)

1541 Sep 24, Philippus Aureolus
Paracelsus (b.1493), Swiss alchemist, physician and theologian,
died. The 1835 poem "Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim" by Robert
Browning was based on the life of Paracelsus. In 2006 Philip Ball
authored "The Devil’s Doctor: Paracelsus and the Renaissance World
of Magic and Science."
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracelsus)(Econ,
1/21/06, p.81)

1527 Theophrastus von Hohenheim
established chemotherapy and the modern school of medical thinking
at the Univ. of Basel in Switzerland.
(TL-MB, p.13)

1529 Bernardino Luini, a pupil
of Leonardo da Vinci, completed his fresco of the Passion and
Crucifixion at the Santa Maria degli Angioli church in Lugano.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T4)

1536 May 21, The Reformation
was officially adopted in Geneva, Switzerland.
(HN, 5/21/98)

1540 The pulmonary circulation
of the blood was discovered by Michael Servetus, a Spanish
theologian and physician. In 1553 he was burned at the stake in
Geneva for heresy.
(TL-MB, 1988, p.16)(WSJ, 9/18/02, p.D8)

1541 Sep 23, Philippus Aureolus
Paracelsus (b.c1493), Swiss physician and alchemist, died at 47. The
1835 poem "Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim" by Robert Browning
was based on the life of Paracelsus.
(HC, 1/9/98)(WUD, 1994, p.1045)(MC, 9/23/01)

1553 Oct 27, Michael Servetus
(b.1511), Spanish theologian and physician, was burnt for heresy in
Geneva, Switzerland. His last book "Christianismi Restitutio"
included a chapter on the pulmonary circulation of blood. In 2002
Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone authored "Out of the Flames." [see
1540]
(HN, 10/27/98)(WSJ, 9/18/02, p.D8)(WSJ, 1/18/08,
p.W10)

1554-1562 Pierre Eskrich (aka Pierre DuVase), a
French illustrator, produced a collection of 218 bird paintings. He
had fled Lyon to Geneva to escape the Edict of Chateaubriand (1551),
a crackdown on Protestantism in France.
(SFC, 3/17/06, p.E7)

1559 May 13, Excavated corpse
of heretic David Jorisz was burned in Basel.
(MC, 5/13/02)

1564 May 27, John Calvin (54),
one of the dominant figures of the Protestant Reformation, died in
Geneva.
(HN, 5/27/99)(MC, 5/27/02)

1570 The hotel Crusch Alva in
Zuoz in the Engadine dates back to this time.
(Hem., 2/97, p.28)

1684 Jan 11, In Switzerland
this day “was so frightfully cold that all of the communion wine
froze," said an entry by Brother Josef Dietrich, governor and
"weatherman" of the Einsiedeln Monastery. The Einsiedeln abbots,
princes within the Holy Roman Empire until 1798, were powerful
leaders who ruled over large swaths of central Switzerland's
mountainous terrain.
(AP, 9/15/07)

1693 The history of the Amish
church began with a schism in Switzerland within a group of Swiss
and Alsatian Anabaptists led by Jakob Ammann (1656-1730).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amish)

1712 Jun 28, Jean-Jacques
Rousseau (d.1778), writer and philosopher, was born in Geneva,
Switzerland. His books include "The Social Contract" (1762) and
Emile (1762).
(www.infed.org/thinkers/et-rous.htm)(HN, 6/28/99)

1714 Sep 7, In Baden,
Switzerland, Charles VI signed the Treaty of Baden, also called the
Peace of Baden, on behalf of the Holy Roman Empire. It was one of
the agreements that concluded the War of the Spanish Succession.
(www.emersonkent.com/historic_documents/treaty_of_baden_1714.htm)

1738 Daniel Bernouilli
(1700-1782), Swiss physicist, mathematician and son of Johan
explained how lift is created, as in a backward spinning golf ball,
by a difference of air pressures. He is known for the Bernouilli
equation.
(WUD, 1994, p.141)(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.A12)

1741-1801 Johann Kaspar Lavater, Swiss theologian:
"I am prejudiced in favor of him who, without impudence, can ask
boldly. He has faith in humanity, and faith in himself. No one who
is not accustomed to give grandly can ask nobly and with boldness."
(AP, 1/2/99)

1754 The Carouge area of Geneva
was ceded to the Kingdom of Sardinia.
(SSFC, 1/7/01, p.T8)

1767 Horace de Saussure, Swiss
scientist, developed a solar cooker using the greenhouse effect, in
the form of several glass boxes set inside one another and placed on
a dark surface.
(SFC, 7/11/07, p.F5)

1782 In Switzerland Anna Goeldi
was beheaded as a witch for an alleged case of poisoning. A museum
on Goeldi was opened in Mollis in 2007 on the 225th anniversary of
her death. In 2008 the canton of Glarus said she should be
exonerated because the execution was a miscarriage of justice.
Goeldi was exonerated on August 27, 2008.
(AP, 6/11/08)(AP, 8/27/08)

1783 The great Swiss
mathematician Leonhard Euler introduced latin squares as a new kind
of magic squares. It later formed the basis for the “sudoku" number
game.
(www.cut-the-knot.org/arithmetic/latin.shtml)(Econ, 5/21/05, p.67)

1798 Henri Jomini of
Switzerland began his military career, volunteering his services to
the French Army. He used the campaigns of Napoleon to formulate
theories of warfare that influenced military commanders through much
of the 19th century. With the peace of Amiens, he left the army and
wrote his Treatise of Grand Military Operations. The book impressed
Napoleon enough to have Jomini appointed a staff colonel in 1805,
Jomini having volunteered again in 1804. Jomini rose to become chief
of staff under Marshall Ney, but left the French army to fight for
Russia in 1813 as a general and aide-de-camp of Alexander I. By the
time of his death in 1869, he had written several other works,
organized the Russian military academy and advised kings on tactics
for their various military campaigns.
(HNQ, 9/10/02)

1807 May 28, Jean Louis Agassiz
(d.1873), Swiss naturalist and educator, was born. He wrote a
succession of papers [1840] outlining continental glaciation not
only of Europe but of North America.
(DD-EVTT, p.129)(AHD,1971, p.24)(HN, 5/28/01)

1809 May 5, Citizenship was
denied to Jews of Canton of Aargau, Switzerland.
(MC, 5/5/02)

1815 The city-state of Geneva,
briefly the capital of the Kingdom of Burgundy, and then a republic,
became part of the Confederation of Switzerland.
(Hem., 1/96, p.81)

1815 Switzerland became
officially neutral.
(SFC, 6/7/96, p.A12)

1816 Lord Byron and guests
gathered at the Villa Diodati on Lake Geneva, Switz. It was here
that Byron challenged his guests to write a ghost story. This led
Mary Shelley to produce Frankenstein in 1818 and John Polidori to
create his short story “The Vampyre" (1819).
(Econ, 1/13/07, p.75)

1818 May 25, Jacob Christoph
Burckhardt (d.1897), Swiss cultural historian, was born. "The people
no longer believe in principles, but will probably periodically
believe in saviors." "Neither in the life of the individual nor in
that of mankind is it desirable to know the future."
(AP, 5/6/98)(AP, 6/11/98)(SC, 5/25/02)

1818 Jun 16, An ice-dammed lake
in the Val de Bagnes above Martigny broke through its barrier
causing many deaths. This event led Jean de Charpentier to focus on
Swiss glaciers and then influence Louis Agassiz with his ideas
regarding glacier development.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Venetz)

1821 Ignatz Venetz, Swiss civil
engineer, presented a paper titled “Temperature Variation in the
Swiss Alps" to the Helvetic Society of Natural Sciences, in which he
described retreating ice glaciers and acknowledged Jean-Pierre
Perraudin, a hunter and mountain guide, as the originator of the
idea that a glacier had once occupied the full length of the Val de
Bagnes. In 1833 Jean de Charpentier (1786-1855), a German-Swiss
geologist, arranged to have the paper published.
(ON, 10/08,
p.10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_de_Charpentier)

1821-1881 Henri Frederic Amiel, Swiss
critic: "The man who has no inner life is the slave of his
surroundings."
(AP, 8/3/97)

1827 Jun 12, Johanna Spyri
(d.1901), Swiss author, was born as Johanna Louise Heusser. She is
best known for her novel Heidi, the story of a young girl who leave
her home in the Swiss Alps for adventures in the world below. [see
June 12, 1829]
(WUD, 1994 p.1379)(HN, 6/12/99)

1828 May 8, Jean Henri Dunant
(d.1910), Swiss philanthropist, was born. He founded the Int’l.
Committee of the Red Cross and was the first recipient (jointly) of
the Nobel Peace Prize.
(HN, 5/8/99)

1837 Louis Agassiz (1807-1873),
Swiss paleontologist, proposed to the Helvetic Society that ancient
glaciers had not only flowed outward from the Alps, but that even
larger glaciers had simultaneously encroached southward on the
plains and mountains of Europe, Asia and North America, smothering
the entire northern hemisphere in a prolonged Ice Age.
(ON, 10/08, p.12)

1839 Swiss scientist Louis
Agassiz described a fossil fish that had been found in Permian marl
slate near Durham, northern England. He named it coelacanthus. Over
the decades similar fossils were found dating from around 380
million to 70 million years ago.
(Econ, 12/14/13, IL p.10)

1840 Apr 27, Edward Whymper
(d.1911), the first person to climb the Matterhorn (1865) on the
border of Switzerland and Italy, was born.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Whymper)

1847 A religious quarrel led to
a short Swiss civil war.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.6)

1848 A Swiss constitution was
enacted that included a mandate for neutrality. It copied almost
wholesale the American constitution. It was revised in 1874. A new
one was adopted in 1999.
(SFC, 7/6/99, p.C6)(SFC, 7/18/02, p.A15)(Econ,
2/14/04, Survey p.7)(Econ, 4/23/11, SR p.6)

1852 Nov 30, Jean Henri Dunant
(1828-1910), Swiss Calvinist, founded the Geneva branch of the YMCA.
In 1855 he took part in the Paris meeting devoted to the founding of
its international organization.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Dunant)

1855 The World Alliance
of the YMCA was established at the first International Conference
held in Paris. Jean Henri Dunant (1828-1910), Swiss Calvinist,
founded the Geneva branch of the YMCA in 1852. In 1855 he took part
in the Paris meeting devoted to the founding of its international
organization.
(http://www.ymca.int/index.php?id=15)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Dunant)

1859 Jun 24, At the Battle of
Solferino, also known as the Battle of the Three Sovereigns, the
French army led by Napoleon III defeated the Austrian army under
Franz Joseph I in northern Italy. Some 6,000 men died in the battle
and thousands of wounded were effectively abandoned as witnessed by
Henri Dunant (31), a Swiss businessman seeking Napoleon for a land
development proposal. In 1862 Dunant published “A Memory of
Solferino" and began a campaign for a volunteer society to aid
wounded soldiers.
(HN, 6/24/99)(ON, 4/08, p.11)

1861 Italy and Switzerland drew
a border line through the Monte Rosa Masif of the Alps with the line
at several places set at the watershed of glaciers. In 2009
shrinking glaciers due to global warming forced the line to be
reset.
(Econ, 4/18/09, p.56)

1862 Nov, Jean Henri Dunant
(1828-1910) published "A Memory of Solferino." His ideas about
creation of a volunteer committee to care for war-wounded led to the
creation in 1863 of the Permanent International Committee for Relief
to Wounded Combatants, later called the International Red Cross.
Dunant, a Swiss businessman, had witnessed the plight of thousands
of wounded left helpless on the battlefield at Solferino, Italy, on
June 24, 1859. Organizing local volunteers to help, Dunant
brought aid to as many of the victims as he could.
(WUD, 1994, p.442)(HNQ, 9/16/99)(ON, 4/08, p.11)

1863 Feb 9, Henri Dunant
(1828-1910) addressed the Geneva Society for Public Welfare and
asked the members to form a volunteer society to aid wounded
soldiers. The Intl. Committee of Red Cross (Nobel 1917, 1944, 1963)
was formed in Geneva, Switz. The red cross design based on the Swiss
flag with the colors reversed.
(ON, 4/08, p.11)(www.redcross.org)(SFC, 6/20/06,
p.A4)

1863 The first road to Vissoie
in the Val d’Anniviers was built.
(SFEC, 5/9/99, p.T14)

1864 Aug 8, The 1st Geneva
Convention was issued on protecting the war wounded.
(www.redcross.org)

1864 Aug 22, In Geneva,
Switzerland, representatives of 12 nations agreed to sign the First
Geneva Contention “for the Amelioration of the Condition of the
Wounded in Armies in the Field." By 1866 twenty countries had
signed. 194 states were signatories as of 2008.
(ON, 4/08, p.12)

1865 Jul 14, Edward Whymper,
Charles Hudson, Michel Croz, and Douglas Hadow became the 1st to
climb the Matterhorn, on the border of Switzerland and Italy. Only
Edward Whymper survived the descent.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Whymper)

1865 Dec 23, France, Belgium,
Italy and Switzerland formed the Latin Monetary Union (LMU). It was
a 19th century attempt to unify several European currencies into a
single currency that could be used in all the member states, at a
time when most national currencies were still made out of gold and
silver. Spain and Greece joined in 1868. It quickly weakened as
members pursued their own economic policies. It was disbanded in
1927.
(WSJ, 1/13/98,
p.A1)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_Monetary_Union)

1870 Jul 30, Clara Barton
departed for field with the Red Cross following the French
declaration of war against Prussia. In Basle Antoinette Margot (27)
joined her as an aide and interpreter.
(ON, 8/12, p.11)

1872 Sep 14, Britain paid US
$15 million for damages during Civil War. The British government
paid £3 million in damages to the United States in compensation for
building the Confederate commerce-raider Alabama. The confederate
navy‘s Alabama was built at the Birkenhead shipyards. Despite its
official neutrality during the American Civil War, Britain allowed
the warship to leave port, and it subsequently played havoc with
Federal shipping. The U.S. claimed compensation, and a Court of
Arbitration at Geneva agreed, setting the amount at £3 million.
(HNQ, 9/2/00)(ON, 9/01, p.12)

1874 May 29, The present
constitution of Switzerland took effect.
(SC, 5/29/02)

1875 Jul 26, Carl Jung
(d.1961), Swiss psychiatrist and analytical psychologist who
identified the introvert and extrovert types, was born in Kesswil,
Switzerland. He saw the I Ching as a tool to help tune into the
noncausal connectedness of the universe-- what he called
synchronicity.
(NH, 9/97, p.13)(WUD, 1994, p.774)(SFEC,10/19/97,
BR p.3)(HN, 7/26/98)

1877 Jul 2, Herman Hesse
(d.1962), German philosopher poet and author, was born in
Switzerland. His work included "Steppenwolf" and he won the Nobel
Prize in literature in 1946.
(HN, 7/2/99)(WUD, 1994, p.666)(SC, 7/2/02)

1880 "Heidi’s Years of
Wandering and Learning" was published. It was later made famous by a
film version with Shirley Temple. It was partly set in Maienfeld,
Switzerland. Johanna Spyri authored the 2-volume Heidi novel
published in 1880-1881. The 2nd volume was titled "Heidi Makes Use
of Her Experience."
(WSJ, 10/2/97, p.A11)(SFEC, 9/24/00, p.T6)(SFC,
7/5/01, p.C7)

1881-1882 Dr. Muller of Germany was said to be
working at the Swiss Geisenheim viticultural station when he made
the crossing that joined the late-ripening Riesling and the
early-ripening and prolific Silvaner`. The grape became know as
Muller-Thurgau. Müller-Thurgau entered the well-kept records of
Germany's vineyards in 1921, but it was not until a major symposium
on the crossing was held at Alzey in 1938 that it gained any
widespread acceptance.
(www.winepressnw.com/features/story/4842844p-4779998c.html)

1882 May 20, The St.
Gotthard-railroad tunnel opened between Switzerland and Italy.
(MC, 5/20/02)

1882 The Hotel Weisshorn was
built in the Val d'Anniviers by an Englishman who brought in all
required materials by mule.
(SFEC, 5/9/99, p.T14)

1886 Sep 9, The Berne
International Copyright Convention took place at the instigation of
Victor Hugo and backed the individual copyright laws of the European
states. It was updated in 1971. In 1993 the Brussels directive
brought in a Europe-wide 70-year rule.
(HN, 9/9/00)(WSJ, 1/31/02,
p.A16)(www.ifla.org.sg/documents/infopol/copyright/ucc.txt)

1886 The Forces Motrices power
station was built over the Rhone in Geneva.
(SSFC, 1/7/01, p.T8)

1887 Oct 6, Charles-Edouard
Jeanneret (d.1965), aka Le Corbusier, Swiss-born French architect
and city planner, was born. He became known for trenchantly stated
principles, such as "a house is a machine for living in" and "a
curved street is a donkey track, a straight street, a road for men."
(HN, 10/6/00)(V.D.-H.K.p.363)

1887 The Marxist Hunchakian
Revolutionary Party, called the Hunchaks, was founded in Geneva,
Switzerland by Armenians from Russia.
(http://homepages.cae.wisc.edu/~dwilson/Armenia/justin.html)

1887 A. Eugen Fick, a Swiss
physician, published the results of experiments with glass lenses
that fit over the entire eye, the first contact lenses.
(WSJ, 1/11/99, p.R21)

1888 Dr. Eugen Frick made the
first set of contact lenses.
(SFEC, 1/24/99, Z1 p.8)

1894 Ferdinand Hodler
(1853-1918), Swiss painter, created a painting 10 meters high for
the Exposition in Antwerp. It depicted the story of the 1865 descent
of Edward Whymper (1840-1911) after he became the first man to climb
the Matterhorn. Four of his party died. Hodler allowed the painting
to be cut up and it’s now in a museum in Berne.
(Econ, 2/18/12,
ILp.26)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Whymper)

1896 Oct 30, Kaspar Wicki,
Swiss inventor, received Swiss patent Nr. 13329 for a key
configuration for the concertina, that made fingering identical in
any key.
(WSJ, 12/7/07,
p.W4)(www.concertina.com/gaskins/wicki/)

1901 Oct 10, Alberto Giacometti
(d.1966), sculptor and painter, was born in Borgonovo, Switzerland.
He was later quoted saying "there is less reality in the work of
contemporary sculptors than in tin soldiers in toy shop windows."
His biography was written by David Sylvester and titled: "Looking At
Giacometti." Another biography by James Lord was titled:
"Giacometti: A Biography."
(SFC, 5/12/96, p.BR-4)(WSJ, 9/30/96, p.A14)(HN,
10/10/01)(WSJ, 12/19/01, p.A16)

1901 Henry Dunant (1828-1910),
Swiss businessman, won the 1st Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts in
establishing the Int’l. Red Cross and the First Geneva Convention
covering treatment of those wounded in war. The prize was shared
with Frederic Passy (1822-1912), French economist, for his efforts
toward international peace.
(ON, 4/08,
p.12)(http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/1901/passy-bio.html)

1903 Jun 19, The young school
teacher, Benito Mussolini, was placed under investigation by police
in Berne, Switzerland.
(HN, 6/19/98)

1905 Nestlé S.A. originated in
a merger of the Anglo-Swiss Milk Company for milk products
established in 1866 by the Page Brothers in Cham, Switzerland, and
the Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé Company set up in 1866 by Henri
Nestlé to provide an infant food product.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nestl%C3%A9)

1905 Jean Lanfray, a Swiss
laborer, murdered his wife and children after drinking 2 glasses of
absinthe. The murder led to a ban on the sale of absinthe. The ban
was lifted in 2005.
(SFC, 3/24/00, p.A3)(SFC, 11/4/04, p.A2)

1910 Oct 30, Jean Henri Dunant
(b.1828), Swiss philanthropist, died. His book “A Memory of
Solferino" (1862) led to the foundation of the Int’l. Committee of
the Red Cross. He was the first recipient (jointly) of the Nobel
Peace Prize.
(http://tinyurl.com/gbxhd)

1910 In Switzerland Kaspar
Winkler founded SIKA, a building materials firm. He had invented a
compound used to waterproof the Gotthard railway tunnel under the
Alps.
(Econ., 2/21/15, p.64)

1921 Hermann Rorschach
(1984-1922), Swiss psychiatrist, wrote his book Psychodiagnostik,
which was to form the basis of the inkblot test. He devised the
original Rorschach test to deduce elements of personality from a
series of inkblots.
(Econ, 11/12/11,
p.96)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Rorschach)

1923 Jul 24, The Treaty of
Lausanne, which settled the boundaries of modern Turkey, was
concluded in Switzerland. It replaced the Treaty of Sevres and
divided the lands inhabited by the Kurds between Turkey, Iraq and
Syria.
(AP, 7/24/97)(SSFC, 12/22/02, p.A14)

1923 Jul 24, The Treaty of
Lausanne, which settled the boundaries of modern Greece and Turkey,
was concluded in Switzerland. It replaced the Treaty of Sevres and
divided the lands inhabited by the Kurds between Turkey, Iraq and
Syria. Article 39 allowed Turkish nationals to use any language they
wished in commerce, public and private meetings, and publications.
The treaty specifically protected the rights of the Armenian, Greek
and Jewish communities. The former provinces of Baghdad, Basra and
Mosul were lumped together to form Iraq. Both countries agreed to a
massive exchange of religious minorities. Christians were deported
from Turkey to Greece and Muslims from Greece to Turkey. A Muslim
community of at least 100,000 was allowed in northern Greece. In
2006 Bruce Clark authored “Twice a Stranger: The Mass Expulsions
that Forged Modern Greece and Turkey."
(WSJ, 3/20/97, p.A17)(AP, 7/24/97)(SSFC,
12/22/02, p.A14)(Econ, 3/19/05, Survey p.9)(Econ, 10/14/06,
p.50)(Econ, 12/9/06, p.92)(Econ, 10/16/10, p.72)

2008 Jul 29, WTO
Director-General announced on that the latest negotiations for a
much-delayed trade liberalization deal under the so-called Doha
Round had broken down after nine days due to unresolved differences.
The deadlock centered on a row between the US and India over special
tariff measures to protect poor farmers from surging imports or
price falls.
(AFP, 7/30/08)

1925 In debates over the Geneva
Protocol opponents touted poison gas as a "decisive offensive
weapon." A ban on chemical and biological weapons was signed by most
nations, but not the US until much later. The Geneva Convention
outlawed the use of biological warfare, but did not prohibit nations
from continuing the production of biological agents.
(SFC,11/12/97, p.C2)(NH, 10/98, p.18)(AH, 6/03,
p.46)

1926 Sep 25, The Convention to
Suppress the Slave Trade and Slavery, an international treaty
created under the auspices of the League of Nations, was first
signed in Geneva to be effective March 9, 1927.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1926_Slavery_Convention)

1927 The Brissago Islands on
Lago Maggiore were sold to a wealthy German businessman, who added a
Roman bath to the villa there.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T5)

1928 The Winter Olympic were
held at St. Moritz, Switz.
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.E14)

1928 Switzerland’s 1st ski
school was introduced at St. Moritz.
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.E14)

1928 Jean-Leon Reutter, a Swiss
engineer, developed the Atmos clock, which was powered by changes in
the atmosphere. LeCoultre & Cie bought the patent in 1935 and
began making the clock a year later. In 1937 the Swiss company
became Jaeger-LeCoultre.
(SFC, 11/19/08, p.G6)

1930 The Bank for International
Settlements (BIS) was founded in Basel, Switzerland.
(Econ, 10/11/08, SR p.20)

1930 Adolf Wolfli (66), Swiss
outsider artist, died. He had been consigned to the Bern psychiatric
hospital from age 30 to his death. He created thousands of drawings
and 45 large illustrated books. Elka Spoerri (d.2002 at 77), art
historian, deciphered and transcribed much of his work.
(SFC, 6/15/02, p.A19)

1932 In France the Basler
Handelbank affair broke out. The president and vice-president of the
commercial bank in Basle were arrested in Paris by the French
police. In their trunks, the investigators found the list of 2,000
French clients who had confidentially deposited their holdings in
Switzerland. They represented all of French high society: a few
senators, a former minister, bishops, generals and manufacturers.
(Econ, 3/7/09,
p.62)(http://swiss-bank-accounts.com/e/banking/secrecy/handelsbank.html)

1934 Mar 26, Switzerland banned
all slanderous criticism of state institutions in the press and
threatened the suspension of publications if the ban was not heeded.
(HN, 3/25/98)

1934 The Eispalast at
Jundfraujoch was carved 65 feet below the surface of a glacier. It
was later enlarged and decorated with sculptures.
(WSJ, 7/21/00, p.W12)

1935 Ella Maillart (d.1997 at
94), Swiss sportswoman, wrote "Among Russian Youth: from Moscow to
the Caucasus." In 1947 she took a trip to Afghanistan with a sick,
morphine-addicted friend and wrote "The Cruel Way, Two Women and a
Ford in Afghanistan."
(SFC, 3/29/97, p.A20)

1936 Jul 20, Turkey signed a
treaty, the Montreux Convention, by which it agreed not to interfere
with transit through the Bosporus. It granted ships unrestricted
passage except in times of war.
(SFEC, 1/11/98, p.A23)(WSJ, 7/28/05,
p.A7)(http://tinyurl.com/6lyog2)

1936 Aug 26, The Anglo-Egyptian
Treaty, calling for most British troops to leave Egypt, except those
guarding the Suez Canal, was signed in Montreux, Switzerland. It was
abrogated by Egypt in 1951.
(AP, 8/26/05)

1938 Nov 9, Maurice Bavaud
(25), a Swiss theology student, failed in his attempt to shoot
Hitler at a Nazi parade in Munich. Switzerland, which followed a
policy of neutrality toward Germany before and during World War II,
failed to intervene on Bavaud's behalf, and he was guillotined in
May, 1941, in Berlin's notorious Ploetzensee prison.
(AP, 11/8/08)

1938 In Lucerne, Switzerland,
the International Festival of Music began its annual event.
Toscanini and Ernest Ansermet created the music festival of Lucerne,
Switzerland, at Tribschen, the house in which Wagner wrote "Die
Meistersinger."
(SFC, 7/21/96, p.T1,5)(Hem, 6/96, p.141)(SFEC,
6/7/98, p.T3)

1938 Switzerland asked Berlin
to stamp German passports with "J" so that they could bar most Jews.
This was later acknowledged.
(WSJ, 5/19/97, p.A18)

1938 Swiss chemists Albert
Hofmann discovered lysergic acid diethylamide-25 (LSD) in 1938 while
studying the medicinal uses of a fungus found on wheat and other
grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals firm, later part of Novartis.
Hofmann was the first person to test the drug when a tiny amount of
the substance seeped on to his finger during a repeat of the
laboratory experiment in April 1943.
(AP, 1/11/06)

1939 Sep 1, Switzerland
proclaimed neutrality.
(MC, 9/1/02)

1939 Sep, Paul Hermann Muller,
a Geigy pesticide researcher in Switzerland, first synthesized DDT.
He combined chloral hydrate with chlorobenzene and a catalyst to
make dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane. The discovery was reported 2
years later.
(SFC, 9/1/96, z1 p.2)(ON, 11/01, p.6)

1939-1945 US Intelligence revealed in 1997
that during WW II the Swiss National Bank sent 280 truckloads of
Nazi gold to Spain and Portugal.
(USAT, 1/13/97, p.3A)

1940 Jun, The Germans began to
loot the artwork of Paris and more than 70,000 residences were
plundered. A lot of artwork was sold to the industrialist Emil
G. Buhrle and his Foundation in Switzerland, the largest buyer of
confiscated French art. The story is told by Hector Feliciano in his
1997 book: "The Lost Museum." The best book on the fate of European
art in WW II was reported to be "The Rape of Europa" by Lynn
Nicholas.
(SFEC, 7/6/97, BR p.7)(SFC,11/19/97, p.E6)

1940 Denis de Rougemont
(1906-1985), Swiss writer who wrote in French, authored “Love in the
Western World," a sweeping history of 8 centuries of romantic
passion.
(WSJ, 1/5/08,
p.W8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denis_de_Rougemont)

1942 Aug 8, Gerhart Riegner
(d.2001 at 90), World Jewish Congress official in Geneva, cabled the
US vice consul to describe Hitler’s plan to deport an estimated 4
million Jews to Eastern Europe and to annihilate them.
(SFC, 12/4/01, p.A19)

1942 Oct 17, Eduard von
Steiger, Justice Minister and minister of police, told leaders of
the Swiss Fatherland Assoc. that the government had decided on a
"fundamental slowing" of Jewish immigration.
(SFC, 6/10/98, p.a10)

1942 Switzerland passed a
euthanasia law to enable those with just a few weeks to live the
opportunity of a dignified death. Swiss law made assisted suicide
lawful under some conditions.
(WSJ, 11/22/02, p.A1)(Econ, 10/15/05, p.59)
1942 Switzerland outlawed
capital punishment for civilians.
(SFC, 7/20/12, p.A2)
1942 Switzerland legalized
prostitution.
(AP, 8/26/13)

1942-1945 Jose Arturo Castellanos (d.1977 at 86),
Salvadoran diplomat in Geneva, gave citizenship certificates to as
many as 40,000 Jews during the Holocaust. In 2010 Israel named him
posthumously as one of the "Righteous Among the Nations."
(AP, 5/14/10)(http://tinyurl.com/28n2pd7)

1943 Apr 16, Swiss chemist
Albert Hoffman (1906-2008) felt the first rush of LSD when a tiny
amount of the substance seeped onto his finger during a laboratory
experiment.
(AP, 4/30/08)

1943 Apr 19, Swiss chemist
Albert Hoffman, following up on an experiment on April 16,
deliberately ingested .25 milligrams of LSD and soon began to feel
its effects. Hallucinations continued on his bicycle ride home and
lasted for some 6 hours.
(SFC, 5/9/96, p.A-1)(Econ, 5/10/08, p.98)

1944 Aug 17, Japanese and Swiss
officials agreed to divert 40% of millions of dollars, paid by the
US and Britain for the care of prisoners of war held by the
Japanese, to pay off Japan’s debts to Swiss businesses. The other
60% was for the free disposal by the Japanese government.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A10)

1944 Oct, In Hungary Eduard
Benedek Brunschweiler, a Swiss representative of the International
Red Cross, took charge of the Pannonhalma Abbey and kept it under
Red Cross protection until Soviet forces expelled him in April 1945.
Some 3,000 people, mostly children, spent the end of the war in the
abbey, including dozens of Jews. In 2006 Hungarian officials
unveiled a memorial at the abbey honoring Brunschweiler.
(AP, 10/16/06)

1945 Apr 28, US 5th army
reached the Swiss border.
(MC, 4/28/02)

1945 The Swiss constitution
introduced the concept of paid maternity leave, but did not create
provisions for payment.
(SFC, 6/14/99, p.A14)

1945 Switzerland agreed with
the US to freeze financial transactions with Germany in early 1945.
The agreement was violated.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A10)

c1945 After the war the US and
its allies made a deal with the Swiss to accept repayment of $60
million and waived further claims. The claims were for gold acquired
from the Nazis during the war. Much of the gold was from occupied
countries and Jews.
(FB, 9/12/96, p.A9)

1945 The Union Bank of
Switzerland took over the Eidgenoessische Bank which had built up an
extensive business with Germany during the Third Reich.
(SFC, 1/17/96, p.A1)

1945-1988 The Swiss maintained contingency plans
for building 400 nuclear warheads. A supply of uranium was
maintained in Wimmis, 21 miles southeast of Berne.
(SFC, 6/7/96, p.A12)

1946 Apr 8,
The League of Nations assembled in Geneva for its last session.
(AP, 4/8/08)

1946 Sep 19, Winston Churchill
made a speech in Zurich where he said: If Europe were once united in
the sharing of its common inheritance there would be no limit to the
happiness, prosperity, and glory of which its 300 or 400 million
people would enjoy."
(WSJ, 3/25/98, p.A22)

1946 Nov, A US Air Force
Douglas C-53 Skytrooper carrying four crew members and eight
passengers crashed on the Swiss Gauli Glacier. A rescue mission used
an aircraft for the first time to land on the glacier and led to the
creation of Switzerland's air rescue services. There were some
injuries but no fatalities.
(AP, 8/9/12)

1946 Hermann Hesse (1877-1962),
Swiss-born German philosopher poet and author, was awarded the Nobel
Prize in literature "for his inspired writings which, growing in
boldness and penetration, exemplify the classical humanitarian
ideals and high qualities of style."
(http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1946/)
1946 The Swiss government
agreed to turn over half of some German assets in vaults to help war
refugees and other victims. The agreement was not kept.
(SFC, 12/1/97, p.A10)
1946 The "Washington accord"
was designed to wrap up Switzerland's obligations to the Allies
following WW II.
(SFC, 3/15/00, p.A20)

1947 Apr 7, At Mont Pelerin,
Switzerland, Friedrich A. von Hayek invited a group of classical
liberals to discuss the threat of freedom posed by the expansionist
governments of the day. The group founded the Mont Pelerin Society
to continue meetings and discussions in the future. They viewed
central planning as the single most important threat to liberty.
(WSJ, 5/8/97,
p.A22)(www.montpelerin.org/montpelerin/mpsAbout.html)

1947 The US began holding a
seat on the Human Rights Commission based in Geneva. It lost its
elected seat in 2001.
(WSJ, 5/4/01, p.A1)

1948 Aug 23, The World Council
of Churches (WCC) was formed in Amsterdam to help reconcile
differences among Christians. Delegates of 147 churches assembled to
merge the Faith and Order Movement and Life and Work Movement.
Church leaders had agreed in 1937 to establish a World Council of
Churches, based on a merger of the Faith and Order Movement and Life
and Work Movement organizations. Headquarters were later established
in Geneva.
(Econ, 2/23/08,
p.79)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Council_of_Churches)

1948 Paul Hermann Muller
(d.1965), a Geigy pesticide researcher in Switzerland, won the Noble
Prize in medicine for his 1939 synthesis of DDT.
(ON, 11/01, p.6)

1948 The Winter Olympic were
held at St. Moritz, Switz., for a 2nd time.
(SSFC, 1/23/05, p.E14)

1948 George de Mestral
(1907-1990), a Swiss inventor, began studying the burdock plant
because of the plant’s ability to attach its seed to his clothes and
dog’s fur. His analysis of the hook and loop system of plant led to
the development of velcro, patented in 1955.
(Econ, 6/11/05, TQ
p.18)(http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa091297.htm)

1949 Aug 12, Four Geneva
Conventions were signed on this date. Signatories agreed that
occupiers would not settle occupied territory with their own people.
Protection of civilian life and property was added to the 4th Geneva
Conventions. The Convention for the Protection of Civilian Persons
in Time of War began on April 21. Two additional protocols were
signed in 1977.
(SFC, 8/11/00, p.A15)(Econ, 8/27/05,
p.39)(www.spj.org/gc-texts.asp)

1951 Switzerland and the US
signed an accord on income tax that dealt with issues of bank
secrecy and exchange of sensitive information. The accord was
renegotiated in 1996.
(WSJ, 2/28/96, p.A-1)
1951 The Geneva-based
International Organization for Migration (IOM), an intergovernmental
organization, was established as the Intergovernmental Committee for
European Migration (ICEM) to help resettle people displaced by World
War II.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Migration)

1954 Oct 22, As a result of the
Geneva accords granting Communist control over North Vietnam, U.S.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower authorized a crash program to train
the South Vietnamese Army.
(HN, 10/22/98)

1955 Jul 21, During the Geneva
summit, President Eisenhower presented his "open skies" proposal
under which the United States and the Soviet Union would trade
information on each other's military facilities and allow aerial
reconnaissance.
(AP, 7/21/07)

1955 Nov 16, Big Four talks,
taking place in Geneva on German reunification, ended in failure.
(HN, 11/16/98)

1956 Swiss designer Max
Miedinger devised the Helvetica typeface. It was later adjusted to
work on Linotype machines by British-born American typographer Mike
Parker (1929-2014). Parker and Matthew Carter left Linotype in 1981
to found Bitstream, the first company dedicated to producing digital
fonts.
(Econ, 3/8/14, p.94)
1956 E.G. Buehrle (b.1890),
German-born Swiss industrialist, died. Emil Buhrle provided arms to
the Third Reich during World War II and amassed one of Europe's
greatest private collections in the aftermath of the war.
(www.buehrle.ch/collection.php?lang=en)

1959 Robert Frank (b.1924), a
Swiss-born photographer, published “The Americans," a collection of
83 powerful photographs taken during a driving trip around American
from 1955-1957. The published photos were selected from some 26,000
negatives.
(Econ, 10/17/09,
p.100)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Frank)

1959 A Swiss gentleman’s
agreement gave 2 cabinet seats each to the 3 major parties, the Free
Democrats, The Christian People’s Party, and the Social Democrats.
One went to the right-wing Swiss People’s Party, SVP.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.5)

1960 Mar 6, The Swiss granted
women the right to vote in municipal elections.
(HN, 3/6/98)

1961 Jun 6, Swiss psychiatrist
Carl Gustav Jung (b.1875), one of the founders of modern psychiatry,
died in Zurich. “As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human
existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being." In
1997 Richard Noll published "The Aryan Christ: The Secret Life of
Carl Jung." Frank McLynn published "Carl Gustav Jung, A Biography."
In 2003 Deirdre Bair authored "Jung: A Biography." In 2004 Sonu
Shamdasani authored “Jung and the Making of Modern Psychology." In
2009 “The Red Book" was published. It was edited by Sonu Shamdasani
and duplicated Jung’s original manuscript, which he worked on from
1914 to 1930.
(SFEC,10/19/97, BR p.3)(SSFC, 12/7/03,
p.M6)(Econ, 3/13/04, p.84)(Econ, 10/10/09, p.89)(Econ, 9/27/14, IL
p.8)

1963 Werner Thomas,
accordionist, began performing a tune he’d written in the late 1950s
at his restaurant in Davos. The tune later became known worldwide as
the chicken dance.
(WSJ, 7/16/01, p.A1)

1964 Feb, Yuri Nosenko
(1927-2008), Soviet KGB officer, defected under CIA guidance in
Geneva. He had begun passing information in June, 1962. He was
incarcerated for his first 3 years in the US and settled there under
a new name in 1969.
(Econ, 9/6/08,
p.101)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuri_Nosenko)

1965 Aug 27, Le Corbusier
(b.1887), Swiss-French architect and writer, died in France. He was
born as Charles Edouard Jeanneret-Gris in La Chaux-de-Fonds,
Switzerland. His book included books include “Vers une architecture"
(Towards a New Architecture) (1923), “The City of Tomorrow" (1925),
and “When the Cathedrals Were White" (1937). In 2014 Anthony flint
authored “Modern man: The Life of Le Corbusier, Architect of
Tomorrow."
(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/lecorbu.htm)(Econ, 11/15/14,
p.85)

1967 The Brissago Islands on
Lago Maggiore passed to the local government.
(SFEC, 6/14/98, p.T5)

1967 Adrienne von Speyr
(b.1902), Swiss mystic, author and physician, died. From her
conversion to Catholicism in 1940 on she experienced episodes of
trance from Good Friday to Holy Saturday reliving the passion of
Jesus.
(WSJ, 4/18/03, p.W13)

1968 Mar 2, In Switzerland the
World Ice Pairs Figure Skating Championship in Geneva was won by
Lyudmila Belousova and Oleg Protopopov (USSR). The Ladies Figure
Skating Championship was won by Peggy Fleming (USA). The Men's
Figure Skating Championship was won by Emmerich Danzer (Austria).
(SC,
3/2/02)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Figure_Skating_Championships)

1971 Jul 24, The Berne
Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works was
promulgated in Paris. It was first accepted in Berne in 1886 at the
instigation of Victor Hugo.
(www.ifla.org.sg/documents/infopol/copyright/ucc.txt)(PNI, 2/5/97,
p.4)

1971 Ernest Beyeler
(1921-2010), Swiss art dealer, helped found the Art Basel art fair.
In 1982 he and his wife created the Beyeler foundation and
commissioned Renzo Piano to design a museum in Riehen to house their
private collection.
(SSFC, 2/28/10, p.C10)
1971 In Switzerland business
professor Klaus Schwab (32) organized a meeting of European
executives that grew to become the World Economic Forum (WEF) at
Davos. By 2000 the forum was a powerful player in global economic
affairs.
(WSJ, 1/27/00, p.A18)(Econ, 1/17/15, p.66)

1971-1985 In 2005 Peter Hug, history professor at
the Univ. of Bern, reported that a Swiss nuclear research center
aided South Africa between 1971 and 1985 in the sectors of
acceleration technology and uranium enrichment.
(AP, 10/28/05)

1972 Switzerland signed a free
trade treaty with the European Common Market.
(SFC, 3/15/00)

1973 Jul 6, Otto Klemperer
(b.1885), German-born conductor and composer, died in Zurich. He had
taken United States citizenship in 1937 and Israeli citizenship in
1970.
(WSJ, 8/20/96,
p.A8)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Otto_Klemperer)

1973 Jul 27, Eddie Rickenbacker
(b.1890), American WW I fighter pilot, died in Zurich. He and
several associates bought Eastern Airlines in 1938 and guided it to
become one of the most profitable airlines in the postwar era.
(HNPD,
10/7/98)(www.ohiohistorycentral.org/entry.php?rec=324)

1973 Dec 21, Israel, Egypt,
Syria, Jordan, US and USSR leaders met in Geneva. The Geneva
Conference of 1973 was an attempt to negotiate a solution to the
Arab-Israeli conflict as called for in UN Security Council
Resolution 338 which was passed after the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conference_(1973))

1973 Paul Sacher (d.1999 at
93), industrialist and symphony conductor, set up the Paul Sacher
Foundation to house manuscripts and letters of composers in Basel.
Sacher and other family members controlled Roche Holding AG and
their joint fortune was valued at $17-20 billion.
(SFC, 5/27/99, p.C6)

1974 Billy Graham, American
evangelist, went to Lausanne to set up a new body that would focus
on winning some 2.7 billion people who had yet to hear the Christian
message. Geneva was already the base for the World Council of
Churches (WCC). Church leaders agreed in 1937 to establish a World
Council of Churches, based on a merger of the Faith and Order
Movement and Life and Work Movement organizations. Its official
establishment was deferred with the outbreak of World War II until
August 23, 1948.
(Econ, 10/30/10,
p.67)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Council_of_Churches)

1975 Vladimir Prelog (d.1998 at
age 91), a Swiss chemist, won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his
work in stereochemistry and the architecture of molecules like
cholesterol and antibiotics.
(SFC, 1/17/98, p.A19)

1976 Dec 6, Dutch War criminal
Pieter Menten (1899-1987) was arrested in Switzerland after fleeing
there in November.
(http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pieter_Menten)

1977 Jul 2, Vladimir Nabokov,
Russian-born author, died in Switzerland. In 1996 a 3-volume
collection of his prose work was issued by the Library of America.
In 1999 Kurt Johnson and Steven Coates authored "Nabokov's Blues:
The Scientific Odyssey of a Literary Genius."
(WSJ, 4/22/99, A20)(SFEC, 10/17/99, BR
p.4)(www.kirjasto.sci.fi/nabokov.htm)

1977 Jun 7, Protocols I and II
were added to the 1949 Geneva Conventions. They prohibited
environmental damage during int’l. and internal armed conflict.
Protocol I prohibited "widespread, long-term and severe damage to
the environment." Guerrilla warfare was affirmed as a legitimate
means of conflict by the Geneva Conventions in 1977, when prisoner
of war status was extended to guerrilla fighters.
(SFC, 8/11/00,
p.A15)(www.unhchr.ch/html/menu3/b/93.htm)

1977 Protocols I and II were
added to the Geneva Conventions. They prohibited environmental
damage during int’l. and internal armed conflict. Protocol I
prohibited "widespread, long-term and severe damage to the
environment." Guerrilla warfare was affirmed as a legitimate means
of conflict by the Geneva Conventions in 1977, when prisoner of war
status was extended to guerrilla fighters.
(SFC, 8/11/00, p.A15)(HNQ, 10/14/01)

1978 Mar 3, The remains of
comedian Charles Chaplin were stolen by extortionists from his grave
in Cosier-sur-Vevey, Switzerland. The body was recovered near Lake
Geneva 11 weeks later.
(AP, 3/3/98)

1981 Nov 30, The United States
and the Soviet Union opened negotiations in Geneva aimed at reducing
nuclear weapons in Europe.
(AP, 11/30/97)

1981 The SEC sued the Swiss
bank Svizzera Italiana to freeze the assets in trades it suspected
were based on material, nonpublic information, i.e. insider trading.
It eventually got the names.
(WSJ, 9/19/96, p.C18)

1982 Nov 29, An 88-nation world
trade conference meeting in Geneva agreed on a new set of guidelines
for encouraging free trade and halting a tide of global
protectionism.
(http://tinyurl.com/36ozv8)

1982 Dec, Swiss investigators
discovered a 14-page Arabic document that became widely known as
“The Project." It set out the Muslim Brotherhood’s strategy for
global dominion.
(www.historycommons.org/context.jsp?item=a1282theproject)(Econ,
10/30/10, p.92)

1982 Klaus Jacobs (1936-2008),
head of the German coffee dealer Jacobs AG, orchestrated the
takeover of Switzerland’s Interfood SA, maker of the Toblerone candy
bar. In 1990 Philip Morris bought Jacobs Suchard for $3.8 billion.
Klaus went on to buy a Swiss staffing firm and in 1996 merged it
with France’s Ecco SA to form Adecco SA, which became one of the
world’s largest staffing firms.
(WSJ, 9/20/08, p.A12)

1983 Nicolas Hayek (1928-2010),
Lebanese-born businessman, introduced the Swatch, an inexpensive
wristwatch, which became highly collectible. He was later credited
with having saved the Swiss watch industry.
(SFC, 6/30/10, p.C5)

1984 Feb 29, In Switzerland a
court ruled that the villagers of Zermatt owned the Matterhorn.
(SFC, 2/29/00, p.A1)

1986 Nov 1, A fire in a Sandoz
factory in Basel left 30 tons of chemicals in the Rhine.
(http://tinyurl.com/yhsjad)

1986 Georg Bednorz and
Alexander Muller, researchers at IBM’s Zurich laboratory, discovered
that that an exotic ceramic material behaved like a superconductor
at 35°K.
(Econ, 12/3/11, TQ p.20)
1986 Swiss physicists Gerd
Binning and Heinrich Rohrer (1933-2013) at IBM's Almaden Research
Center won the Nobel Prize in Physics for inventing the
scanning-tunneling microscope used to see and manipulate atoms. They
shared the prize with Ernst Ruska.
(SJBJ, Jan., '96,
p.40)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinrich_Rohrer)

1987 Jul 23, Hussein Hariri
(21), a Lebanese hijacker, commandeered an Air Afrique DC-10 flying
from Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, to Paris. He was captured
during a refueling stop in Geneva and was sentenced to life in
prison for killing a passenger and seriously wounding a flight
attendant. In 2004 he was released and deported to Lebanon.
(AP, 10/17/04)

1988 Dec 13, PLO chairman
Yasser Arafat addressed the U.N. General Assembly in Geneva, where
it had reconvened after the United States refused to grant Arafat a
visa to visit New York.
(AP, 12/13/98)

1988 In Switzerland banking
regulators published the first Basel Capital Accord, Basel 1. It
recognized that some loans and investments were less risky than
others and weighed them accordingly. Work on the Basel 2 accords,
Int’l. Convergence of Capital Measures and Capital Standards," began
in 1996 and were published in 2004.
(Econ, 5/20/06, Survey p.10)

1988 At Davos, Switzerland,
during the World Economic Forum, Prime Ministers Papandreou of
Greece and Ozal of Turkey embarked on a peace initiative, setting up
a hot-line and vowing to avoid war.
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.A8)

1989 Apr 19, Adnan Khashoggi, a
Saudi financier, was arrested in Switzerland at the request of the
US Government, which is seeking his extradition to New York to stand
trial on charges of racketeering, fraud and obstruction of justice.
He faced charges stemming from ''illegal property dealings'' on
behalf of Ferdinand E. Marcos, the ousted President of the
Philippines, and his wife, Imelda. In 1992 Khashoggi and
Imelda Marcos were found not guilty of racketeering by a jury in
Manhattan.
(http://tinyurl.com/qp8da)(www.maykuth.com/Archives/marcos90.htm)

1989 In Zurich authorities
experimented with an open access to drugs program, which caused an
escalation in drug dealing and violence.
(SFEC, 11/29/98, p.A21)

1989 Tim Berners-Lee wrote a
proposal at CERN, Switzerland, that a global hypertext space be
created in which any network-accessible information could be
referred to by a single "Universal Document Identifier". In 1990 he
wrote a program called WorldWideWeb.
(SFEC, 3/15/98,
p.W26)(http://www3.org/People/Berners-Lee/ShortHistory.html)

1990 Nov 27, The canton
Appenzell Rhodes-Interieur was required to count women’s votes by a
decision of the Swiss Federal Tribunal. It was the last Swiss state
to finally give women the right to vote.
(Hem., 2/97, p.26)

1990 Dec 14, Friedrich
Durrenmatt (b.1921), Swiss author and playwright, died. In 2006 the
Univ. of Chicago published a translation of his selected writings in
3 volumes. "What was once thought can never be unthought."
(AP,
11/15/00)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_D%C3%BCrrenmatt)

1990 In Switzerland legislation
was passed to punish bankers who knowingly accepted money that came
from a crime.
(WSJ, 7/3/96, p.A8)

1991 A dye-sensitized solar
cell, also known as Gratzel cells, was invented by Michael Gratzel
and Brian O'Regan at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne.
He pioneered research on energy and electron transfer reactions in
mesoscopic-materials and their optoelectronic applications.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dye-sensitized_solar_cell)

1992 May 20, Switzerland
formally applies to join the European Communities.
(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1992/index_en.htm)

1992 Aug 7, The 39-nation
Conference on Disarmament in Geneva produced the final draft of a
treaty to ban chemical weapons, ending 24 years of talks.
(AP, 8/7/97)

1992 Dec 6, A narrow majority
of Swiss referendum voters rejected the idea of joining the European
Economic Area, a free trade club embracing the EU and Liechtenstein.
(Econ, 5/22/04,
p.46)(http://europa.eu.int/abc/history/1992/index_en.htm)

1992 Switzerland outlawed
capital punishment for the Swiss military.
(SFC, 7/20/12, p.A2)
1992 In Zurich, Switzerland, a
festival was begun known as the Street Parade to celebrate techno
music under the motto: "Love, peace and tolerance." From 2,000
people at the first event it grew to some 400,000 by 1997.
(SFC, 8/18/97, p.E4)
1992 Scientists at Novartis
synthesized the compound that would become Gleevec (Glivec). It had
been identified as promising compound for treating leukemia. In
2001, the US FDA approved Gleevec for chronic myeloid leukemia
(CML).
(http://tinyurl.com/6e9nnb)

1993 Sep 11, Austrian born US
conductor and author Erich Leinsdorf died in Zurich, Switzerland, at
age 81. His work included "Cadenza."
(AP, 9/11/98)

1993 Dec 15, In Geneva, 117
countries completed the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on
Tariffs and Trade, agreeing on a reform package intended to
jump-start the global economy.
(AP, 12/15/98)

1994 Jan 1, The North American
Free Trade Agreement went into effect. Under the system a complaint
is referred to a panel of experts who debate it and render a
decision. The losing nation must then change its practices or offer
compensation to the injured nations. Members who refuse to comply
can be subjected to trade retaliation, such as tariffs to their
exports. It was run out of Geneva by Renato "Rocky" Ruggiero. GATT
gave poorer countries 10 years to strengthen their drug-patent laws
and a similar period for the US to lift its textile quotas. The
World Trade Organization (WTO), founded as the successor to the
General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), a relatively weak
regulator of int’l. trade, was a product of the Uruguay Round of
negotiations (1986-1994). In 2000 John R. MacArthur authored "The
Selling of "Free Trade:" NAFTA, Washington, and the Subversion of
American Democracy."
(SFC, 10/17/96, A9)(WSJ, 12/3/96, p.A1)(WSJ,
12/13/96, p.A1)(AP, 1/1/98) (SFC, 11/24/99, p.A1)(SFEC, 7/2/00, BR
p.3)

1994 Oct 5, 48 members of a
secret religious doomsday cult were found dead in apparent
murder-suicides carried out simultaneously in two Swiss villages;
five other bodies were found in a sect apartment in Montreal,
Canada.
(AP, 10/5/99)

1994 Oct, Seven Picasso
paintings worth an estimated $44 million are stolen from a gallery
in Zurich. They are recovered in 2000.
(AP, 2/11/08)

1994 Switzerland began a
controversial 3-year experimental heroin distribution program. The
program led to a huge drop in crime and survived a ballot challenge
in 1997.
(SFC, 7/11/97, p.A14)

1995 Feb, In Zurich the police
clamped down on the open drug scene and dispersed the junkies. There
were an estimated 30,000 addicts in the country.
(SFC, 7/11/97, p.A11)

1995 Oct, Swiss astronomers
Michel Mayor (b.1942) and Didier Queloz (b.1966) revealed that the
spectrum of light from the star 51 Pegosi shifts on a regular
4.23-day period and concluded that the shifts were due to a nearby
planet.
(SFC, 2/27/97,
p.A6)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Mayor)

1995 A group of 7 Swiss artists
registered the domain name of Etoy.com with Network Solutions. In
1999 the toy company EToys.com sued the artists and forced them to
shut their web site down. In 2003 Adam Wishart and Regula Bochsler
authored: "Leaving Reality Behind: "Etoy vs. eToys.com & Other
Battles to Control Cyberspace."
(SSFC, 2/2/03, p.AM3)
1995 Binjamin Wilkomirski
authored his memoir "Fragments," which purported to be about his
survival at the Majdanek concentration camp. In 2002 Blake Eskin
authored "A Life in Pieces" that told the story of how Bruno
Doessekker (b.1941) fabricated the story.
(WSJ, 2/5/02, p.A16)
1995 Prompted by Jewish groups
Swiss banks searched their dormant accounts and claimed to have
found only $32 million.
(SFC, 10/24/96, p.C2)
1995 Protease inhibitors, a
cocktail drug therapy for AIDS, were first introduced. AIDS became
the leading cause of death among Americans aged 25-44. Hoffman-La
Roche, a Swiss drug firm, launched the first protease inhibitor.
(SSFC, 6/3/01, p.A21)(Econ, 6/2/12, p.80)

1996 Jan 31, In Switzerland 5
people died in the Bernese Alps when their hot air balloon crashed
into a mountainside at a height of 2,400 meters.
(AP, 2/26/13)

1996 Mar 8, In Zurich
Ciba-Geigy and Sandoz planned a merger valued at $30 billion. The
new company was named Novartis.
(WSJ, 1/2/97, p.R2)(WSJ, 6/6/00, p.A1)

1996 May 3, A weak compromise
treaty was passed in Geneva that aimed to phase out non-detectable
plastic mines, and introduced rules to limit the lifespan of
anti-personnel mines planted outside marked fields to 3 months. The
new treaty will go into effect once it is signed by 20 countries and
revised an outdated 1980 weapons protocol signed by 57 nations. It
has few enforcement provisions. The international conference in
Geneva ended 30 months of arduous negotiations over whether to ban
land mines with a weak compromise treaty giving countries nine years
to switch to detectable, self-destructive devices.
(SFC, 5/4/96, p.A-1)(AP, 5/3/97)

1996 Oct 30, The government
announced that it would join NATO’s Partnership for Peace program to
promote European security.
(SFC, 10/31/96, p.A12)

1996 The independent Volcker
commission was set up to find the truth about assets deposited by
Holocaust victims in Swiss banks. In 1999 the committee presented a
list of some 54,000 accounts with "possible or probable
relationships" to Holocaust victims with a total value of as much as
$1.3 billion.
(SFC, 12/7/99, p.A10)

1996 The Independent Commission
of Experts on Switzerland and WW II was set up. It was led by
Francois Bergier, Swiss historian. In 2001 the commission published
their report "Switzerland as a Hub for German Covert Operations from
1939-1952."
(SFC, 12/7/01, p.F5)

1996 The French firm Ecco
merged with Adia of Switzerland to form Adecco. The merger made
Adecco the world’s largest employment firm ahead of Manpower.
(Econ, 1/6/07, p.57)

1996 Karl Muller, Swiss
engineer, invented a new type of shoe designed to re-create the
positive effects of walking barefoot. The shoes were named MBTs
(Masai Barefoot Technology) after the African Masai tribe.
(SSFC, 11/25/07,
p.F3)(www.sunsetbirkenstock.com/shop/mbt.php)

1997 Jan 9, Christoph Meili,
night watchman at the Union Bank of Switzerland, salvaged an armful
of books and papers that contained bank records from the Nazi era
that were about to be shredded. His dismissal from the security
company for which he worked, effective at the end of April, was
announced Feb 24.
(SFC, 1/17/96, p.E1)(SFC, 2/24/96, p.A14)

1997 Feb, Three Swiss banks
announced that they had put about $70 million into an account with
the Swiss National Bank to establish a "Humanitarian Fund" for the
victims of the Holocaust.
(SFC, 2/6/97, p.C2)

1997 Mar 22, In Lausanne,
Switz., Tara Lipinski, at age 14 years and 10 months, became the
youngest women's world figure skating champion.
(AP, 3/22/97)

1997 May 17, In Zaire rebel
forces entered Kinshasa and Laurent Kabila declared himself
president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Kabila requested
Swiss authorities to block Mobuto Sese Seko’s access to his Swiss
villa. The house was seized and searched and documents were found
that related to his wealth. The seizure was declared legal Aug 7.
(SFEC, 5/18/97, Z1 p.6)(SFC, 8/8/97, p.E3)(AP,
5/17/98)

1997 Sep 1, In Switzerland
robbers made off with $37 million in cash from a Zurich post office.
By Sep 8 Swiss and Italian police had detained 13 suspects. A total
of 19 people in five countries were arrested in connection with the
case.
(WSJ, 9/2/97, p.A1)(SFC, 9/9/97, p.A11)(AP,
9/1/07)

1997 Sep 29, It was reported
that Swiss voters backed the continuation of a 3-year experiment in
more lenient drug laws that included free heroin to hard-core
addicts to cut crime.
(WSJ, 9/29/97, p.A1)

1997 Oct 13, Swiss bank
officials said that 4,000 more unclaimed accounts from the Holocaust
era were found containing about $4 million.
(SFC, 10/14/97, p.A12)

1997 Oct 24, The Swiss
government announced plans to sell up to half of its gold reserves.
The announcement sent gold prices to a 12-year low to $308.80.
(SFC,10/24/97, p.D1)

1997 Oct 29, Swiss banks
released findings of an additional $12.4 million in unclaimed funds
from WW II.
(SFC,10/30/97, p.A13)

1997 Nov 2, Franziska
Rochat-Moser of Switzerland led the women in the 28th New York City
Marathon in two hours, 28 minutes and 43 seconds.
(WSJ, 11/3/97, p.A1)

1997 Nov 8, It was reported
that Swiss authorities had evidence that 7 Israeli secret service
agents were involved in a plot to kidnap Athena Roussel, the
12-year-old daughter of Christina Onassis and heir to a $2.4 billion
trust fund.
(SFC,11/8/97, p.A10)

1997 Nov 18, Holocaust
survivors from Latvia received the first checks from a $200 million
fund set up by Swiss banks. Individual survivors were to each
receive $1000.
(SFC,11/19/97, p.C4)

1997 Dec 8, Union Bank of
Switzerland and the Swiss Bank Corp. announced a merger. It will
create the world’s 2nd largest bank.
(SFC,12/897, p.A16)

1997 Dec 12, Negotiators in
Geneva for the World Trade Organization (WTO) signed an accord to
open up the banking and insurance sectors of some 70 member
countries to foreign competition.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A10)

1997 Dec 12, The high court
told Swiss banks to send some $500 million in assets of the late
Ferdinand Marcos back to the Philippines.
(SFC,12/13/97, p.A14)

1997 The Swiss film "Fire in
Paradise" was directed by Markus Imhoof. It was set in 1912 and was
about an woman who takes another’s place for an arranged marriage in
Asia.
(SFC, 1/9/98, p.D6)

1997 Urs Kamber, a national
track star, introduced the Heidiland concept for the town of
Sargans.
(SFEC, 9/24/00, p.T6)

1997 A Swiss federal law made
money laundering and abetting it a criminal offense.
(Econ, 2/14/04, Survey p.12)

1997 Endeavor, a New York-based
non-profit group dedicated to promoting entrepreneurship in emerging
economies, was founded. Initial operations began in Argentina and
Chile with seed capital from Stephan Schmidheiny, a Swiss
industrialist.
(Econ, 8/2/08, p.69)

1997 Peter Brabeck took over as
CEO of Nestle SA.
(WSJ, 3/18/04, p.A1)

1998 Jan 28, From Switzerland 3
balloonists set out to circle the globe in the Breitling Orbiter 2.
They failed to get clearance from flying over China in time and were
forced down in Burma on Feb 7 after traveling a record 4,730 miles.
(SFC, 2/7/98, p.11)

1998 Feb 25, The first legal
brothel opened in Zurich.
(SFC, 2/26/98, p.A13)

1998 Feb, The Schwab Foundation
for Economic and Social Development was established with Klaus
Schwab as president.
(WSJ, 1/27/00, p.A18)

1998 Mar 26, Three major Swiss
banks pledged to set up a compensation fund in the US for a global
settlement with Holocaust victims. The Swiss government announced a
blunt non-involvement in the global settlement.
(SFC, 3/27/98, p.A12)(SFC, 4/2/98, p.C2)

1998 Apr 1, The Swiss
government announced a blunt non-involvement in the global
settlement by banks with Holocaust victims.
(SFC, 4/2/98, p.C2)

1998 Jun 28, The 12th World
AIDS Conference opened in Geneva with some 12,000 participants.
(SFC, 6/29/98, p.A1)(AP, 6/28/99)

1998 Aug 12, Representatives of
Swiss banks and holocaust survivors agreed to a settlement of $1.25
billion in reparations for victims of the Nazi regime.
(SFC, 8/13/98, p.A1)

1998 Aug 19, The new Kultur and
Knogresszentrum designed by Jean Nouvel will open.
(SFC, 7/21/96, p.T5)

1998 Sep 18, A secret, 269 page
Swiss report asserted that Raul Salinas assumed control of
practically all drug shipments in Mexico in 1988 when his brother
became president.
(SFC, 9/19/98, p.A12)

1998 Oct 4, Former Swiss Pres.
Jean-Pascal Delamuraz died at age 62. He served his one year
rotating term in 1996 and made headlines that Dec. when he described
Jewish demands for compensation for Holocaust victims as blackmail.
(SFC, 10/5/98, p.A17)

1998 Oct 20, In Switzerland
officials announced that they seized over $90 million from Raul
Salinas after an investigations revealed that the money was received
for protecting drug shipments. Swiss authorities requested that
Britain seize an additional $23.4 million deposited in England.
(SFC, 10/21/98, p.A10)

1998 Dec 12, Marc Hodler
(1919-2006), Swiss lawyer and International Olympics Committee
official, unleashed a series of corruption allegations that included
systemic buying and selling of votes in Olympic bidding,
particularly for the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City.
(SFC, 10/21/06, p.B6)

1998 Dec, Swiss authorities
indicted Pavlo Lazarenko, a former prime minister of Ukraine, on
money laundering charges. Sergei Mikhailov, an alleged Moscow
kingpin, was tried on charges that he belonged to a criminal
organization. Mikhailov was acquitted on insufficient evidence.
(SFEC, 12/20/98, p.A32)

1998 In Zurich 815 man-made
Swiss brown milking cows were used to help celebrate the 150th
anniversary of the constitution.
(SFC, 7/6/99, p.C6)

1998 In Lucerne the new $134
million, 1,840 seat Culture and Convention Center auditorium opened.
It was designed by Jean Nouvel of France and the acoustics were done
by Russell Johnson.
(SFEC, 6/13/99, p.T10)

1999 Jan 2, Rolf Liebermann,
Swiss composer, died in Paris. He led the Hamburg Opera from
1959-1972 and the Paris Opera from 1973-1980. His work included
"Eleonore 40/45," "Penelope," "L'Ecole des Femmes" and "La Foret."
(SFC, 1/4/99, p.D2)

1999 Feb 1, In Switzerland the
IOC adopted its first ethics commission and code of conduct.
(SFC, 2/2/99, p.A10)

1999 Feb 3, In Switzerland 60
of the 105 members of the IOC met to formulate an assault on
performance enhancing drugs.
(WSJ, 2/4/99, p.A1)

1999 Feb 23, Heavy rain and
snow in the Alps left 5 people dead and 13 missing in Austria,
Switzerland, France and Germany. An avalanche in the Austrian Alps
at Galtuer killed 9 people and at least 30 were missing.
(WSJ, 2/23/99, p.A1)(SFC, 2/24/99, p.A8)

1999 May 20, The US Justice
Dept. settled charges against Roche Holding AG and BASF AG, two of
the largest vitamin makers, for price fixing. Roche agreed to pay
$500 million with a guilty plea, and BASF agreed to pay $225 million
with a guilty plea.
(SFC, 5/21/99, p.A3)

1999 Jul 27, In Switzerland 19
people were killed as they tried to "canyon" down a narrow gorge on
the Saxeten River off Lake Brienz. Two people were still missing and
13 were identified as Australians. 18 tourists and 3 guides died in
the flash flood. In 2001 6 former employees of the adventure company
were convicted of negligent manslaughter and given suspended
sentences with fines.
(SFC, 7/28/99, p.A1)(SFC, 7/29/99, p.A10)(SFC,
12/12/01, p.A7)

1999 cAug 22, The chief of the
secret service was suspended amid reports that he had embezzled
millions of dollars and was using the money to assemble a private
army. Accountant Dino Bellasi was accused of embezzling $6 million
from the Defense Ministry and used the money to train a secret army.
(WSJ, 8/23/99, p.A1)(SFC, 9/3/99, p.A8)

1999 Oct 24, In Swiss
parliamentary elections the right wing People's Party gained 14
seats in the 200 member lower house for a total of 44.
(SFC, 10/25/99, p.A11)

1999 Nov 10, The World
Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) was founded in Lausanne, Switzerland, to
thwart drug users in all sports.
(www.wada-ama.org/en/About-WADA/History/WADA-History/)

1999 Dec 26, In Europe heavy
winds and rain killed 88 people in France, 17 dead in Germany and 13
dead in Switzerland. A 2nd storm hit a day later. Damages from the
storms were later estimated to be at least $4 billion with 90 people
dead. The storms destroyed an estimated 400 million trees across
France.
(SFC, 12/27/99, p.A12)(WSJ, 12/27/99, p.A1)(SFC,
12/28/99, p.A8)(SFC, 1/4/00, p.A11)(SFC, 1/15/00, p.A1)(AP, 1/25/09)

1999 At Davos, Switzerland,
during the World Economic Forum, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
announced a Global compact to give a human face to the global
market. He also called on business leaders to set global labor and
environmental standards.
(WSJ, 1/23/08, p.A8)

1999 The Swiss-based Center for
Humanitarian Dialogue (CHD) was founded by 4 people. By 2008 it had
a staff of over 70 and had helped resolve major conflicts in
Indonesia and Kenya.
(Econ, 7/5/08, p.71)

1999 Pres. Nazarbayev grew
more self-protective after he came under suspicion of stowing funds
in Swiss bank accounts. The Swiss froze over a dozen Kazakhstan bank
accounts for alleged money laundering.
(WSJ, 9/12/02, p.A8)(WSJ, 5/6/03, p.A24)

2000 Jan 10, In Switzerland a
Crossair Saab-340 airplane crashed after takeoff from Zurich and all
10 people aboard were killed.
(SFC, 1/11/00, p.A11)

2000 Jan 29, Pres. Clinton
addressed the World Economic Forum at Davos and urged corporate
leaders to help lift the burden of debt from developing countries
and to examine environmental concerns. Some 1000 protestors
demonstrated outside.
(SFEC, 1/30/00, p.A16)

2000 Jun 5, Jeanne Hersch,
philosopher, died at age 89. She was the 1st woman to be appointed a
professor at a Swiss university. Her books included ""The Right to
Be a Man," Ideologies and Reality," and "The Power of Freedom."
(SFC, 6/6/00, p.A21)

2000 Oct 15, At least 31 people
were killed as landslides due to heavy rains continued in the Alps
of Switzerland and Italy. 23 died in northern Italy and 8 in
southern Switzerland
(SFC, 10/16/00, p.F8)(SFC, 10/18/00, p.A14)(SFC,
10/19/00, p.C4)

2000 Dec 13, A Sri Lankan
national murdered his girlfriend, Kavitha Kandiahr (23), in Basel,
Switzerland. He was arrested on Aug 26, 2014, in New Zealand under a
Swiss warrant and granted interim name suppression by a New Zealand
court pending an appearance next week.
(AP, 8/26/14)

2000 The Swiss franc was
explicitly backed by gold until this year.
(Econ, 11/29/14, p.66)

2001 Mar 23, Parliament voted
to permit abortions until the 12th week. The centrist Christian
People’s Party planned to force a national referendum on the issue.
(SFC, 3/24/01, p.A11)

2001 Apr 1, The Pritzker Prize
for Architecture was awarded to Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Mueron
of Basel, Switzerland.
(SFC, 4/2/01, p.D1)

2001 Jun 1, Police in Geneva
found the decomposed body of a 16-month-old girl whose mother, a
Portuguese immigrant, was arrested May 8 for stealing a cell phone.
(SFC, 6/21/01, p.A10)

2001 Jun 10, Swiss voters by a
narrow margin approved arming their soldiers on int’l. peacekeeping
missions and to allow them to train with NATO.
(SFC, 6/11/01, p.A9)

2001 Sep 10, In Switzerland
nurse Roger Andermatt (32) was reported to have confessed to killing
of 27 elderly and ailing patients over a 6-year period (1995-2001).
In 2005 he was sentenced to life in prison for killing 22 elderly
nursing home residents.
(SFC, 9/12/01, p.C4)(AP, 1/28/05)

2001 Oct 24, In Switzerland 2
trucks collided in the 10.6 mile Gotthard tunnel and at least 10
people were killed. 11 were later confirmed dead with 30 people
missing. The tunnel was expected to stay closed for weeks.
(SFC, 10/25/01, p.A15)(SFC, 10/26/01, p.D2)(SFC,
10/27/01, p.C1)

2001 Dec 13, It was reported
that 83 vanadium miners at the Vantech Tech. mining operations in
Steelport, South Africa, were let go between 1998 and 2001 after
suffering respiratory problems. Vantech was a subsidiary of the
Swiss-based Xstrata.
(SFC, 12/13/01, p.E2)

2002 Jan 22, The Global Fund to
Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria was established as a Swiss
Foundation.
(www.theglobalfund.org/en/about/publications/)

2002 Jan 31, Crossair, a
regional carrier and successor airline to the bankrupt Swissair,
announced plans that will make it Europe's 4th largest international
airline, under the new name Swiss.
(EB, 2002, p.11)(Econ, 2/14/04, p.10)

2002 Feb 23, Switzerland
largest bank said it was freezing accounts containing money of the
family of Sani Abacha of Nigeria, dictator from 1993-1998. The total
blocked now reached $720 million.
(SSFC, 2/24/02, p.A20)

2002 Apr 17, The Swiss
government announced that the family of Sani Abacha will return $1
billion to Nigeria in an out-of-court settlement that allowed them
keep $100 million.
(SFC, 4/18/02, p.A11)

2002 May 15, The National
Exhibition, Expo.02, opened. The $823 million production, scattered
around 3 lakes and 4 town, was set to close Oct 20.
(SSFC, 5/26/02, p.C5)

2002 Jun 2, About 72% of Swiss
voters approved a measure permitting abortions in the 1st 12 weeks
of pregnancy.
(SFC, 6/3/02, p.A6)
2002 Jun 2, It was reported
that atrazine, a commonly used herbicide made by Sygenta AG of
Switzerland, had been linked to cancer in humans and deformities in
frogs.
(SSFC, 6/2/02, p.A3)

2002 Jul 1, Bashkirian flight
2937 with 45 Russian children headed for a beach vacation in Spain
were among 71 people killed when their chartered Tupolev airliner
slammed into a Boeing 757 DHL cargo plane over southern Germany. The
flights were under Swiss air control. An onboard device told the
pilot to climb but he followed a controller’s order to dive instead.
In 2007 four employees of a Swiss air traffic control company were
convicted of negligent homicide for the crash of flight 2937.
(AP, 7/2/02)(SFC, 7/2/02, p.A1)(WSJ, 7/2/02,
p.A1)(SFC, 7/3/02, p.A6)(WSJ, 7/9/02, p.A1)(AP, 9/4/07)

2002 Jul 3, Swiss authorities
said a collision-warning system was out of service in the Zurich
tower when it took control of a Russian airliner and a cargo jet
shortly before they collided on July 1 at 35,000 feet, killing 71
people, including 45 children headed for an end-of-school beach
holiday. One of 2 required air controllers was on a break.
(AP, 7/3/02)(SFC, 7/4/02, p.A8)

2002 Aug 20, The Swiss
government returned to Peru about $77.5 million linked to former
Peruvian spy chief Vladimiro Montesinos, saying the money came from
corrupt arms deals. The money includes assets of Gen. Nicolas de
Bari Hermoza Rios, Peru's former armed forces chief, who also faces
corruption charges. $33 million linked to Montesinos remained
blocked in Swiss banks.
(AP, 8/21/02)

2002 Sep 8, Georges-Andre
Chevallaz (87), a former Swiss president (1980) and member of the
ruling cabinet for 10 years, died in Lausanne.
(AP, 9/9/02)

2002 Sep 10, Switzerland became
the 190th member of the UN, preserving its historic neutrality but
stepping more actively onto the world stage.
(AP, 9/10/02)

2002 Sep 22, Switzerland held a
referendum on the use of tons of "excess" gold sold weekly from the
vaults of Switzerland's central bank. The government wants to split
the money three ways: a third to Swiss cantons, or states, a third
to its social security program exclusively for Swiss residents and a
third to be divided evenly between self-help projects for use at
home and abroad.
(AP, 9/21/02)

2002 Nov 5, In Switzerland
representatives of over 40 countries along with industry
representatives and advocacy groups passed a UN-backed certification
plan to block the trade of illicit diamonds.
(SFC, 11/6/02, p.A18)

2002 Xstrata was born out of
the initial public offering of the coal mines of Glencore, a private
commodity trader based in Switzerland. It was first listed on the
London Stock Exchange as it acquired Glencore's coal assets in
Australia and South Africa. The Company was founded in 1926 in
Switzerland as Sudelektra, an infrastructure and electricity
projects concern operating in Latin America.
(Econ, 3/13/10, p.68)

2003 Jan 26, At the World
Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Bill Gates announced that his
charitable foundation will spend $200 million for medical research
in poor and undeveloped countries. In partnership with the
National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Bill & Melinda Gates
Foundation (BMFG) granted $200 million to the Foundation for the
National Institutes of Health (FNIH).
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Challenges_In_Global_Health)(SFC,
1/27/03, p.A3)

2003 Mar 1, In Geneva more than 170 nations
agreed, despite US objections, on a text for a tobacco treaty that
would impose worldwide restrictions on advertising and labeling,
while clamping down on smuggling and second-hand smoke.
(AP, 3/1/03)

2003 Mar 2, Landlocked
Switzerland became the first European country to win the America's
Cup as "Alinghi" swept Team New Zealand in five races.
(AP, 3/2/04)

2003 Apr 9, In Geneva
inventions from around the planet were presented during the world's
largest inventions fair.
(AP, 4/10/03)(SFC, 4/10/03, p.A2)

2003 Jul 8, In Switzerland a
swerving car plowed through pedestrians on a downtown bridge in
Lausanne. Two people were killed, including a woman pushing her
child in a stroller.
(AP, 7/8/03)

2003 Jul 17, Walter Zapp (97),
inventor of the Minox mini camera featured in spy movies, died, in
northern Switzerland. Zapp was born in 1905 in Riga, Latvia.
(AP, 7/28/03)

2003 Sep 28, A nationwide power
blackout in Italy hit virtually the whole population in the dead of
night. Power was out for as much as 18 hours. Problems began after a
tree branch hit power lines in Switzerland.
(AP, 9/28/03)(WSJ, 10/1/03, p.A1)(AP, 10/1/03)

2003 Oct 19, The nationalist
Swiss People's Party (SVP), led by Christoph Blocher, won elections
to become the leading party in the lower house of parliament with 55
of 200 seats.
(AP, 10/19/03)(SFC, 10/20/03, p.A8)(Econ,
2/14/04, Survey p.5)

2003 Dec 10, The World Summit
on the Information Society began a 3-day meeting in Geneva, Switz.
(SSFC, 12/7/03, p.C2)

2003 Aug, In Switzerland Sheikh
Falah bin Zayed bin Sultan al-Nahyan, the brother of the president
of the United Arab Emirates, hit an Italian-American, Silvano Orsi,
with the buckle of his belt in a hotel. in a trial in June, 2008, he
was ordered to pay 540,000 Swiss francs (337,000 euros, 532,000
dollars) by the court, suspended for three years. The sheikh was
also sentenced to pay legal costs of nearly 3,000 Swiss francs. In
2009 he was acquitted on appeal against the imposed fines.
(AFP,
3/28/09)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falah_bin_Zayed_bin_Sultan_Al_Nahyan)

2004 Feb 24, In Switzerland
Vitaly Kaloyev of Russia killed Pieter Nielsen, a Danish air traffic
controller with the Swiss company Skyguide. Nielsen had been on duty
during the July 1, 2002, collision between a Bashkirian Airlines
plane and a DHL cargo jet. Kolayev’s family was killed in the crash.
In 2007 Switzerland's highest court ordered Kolayev’s release
because he had served more than two-thirds of his sentence with good
behavior.
(AP, 11/8/07)

2004 Jun 14, The Swiss
parliament voted to end a 96-year ban on absinthe. The green spirit
was allowed back into shops in much of western Europe following an
EU directive in 1981, but it remained outlawed in Switzerland.
(AFP, 6/14/04)

2004 Nov 13, A 61-year-old
German engineer, Gotthard L., was arrested in Switzerland on an
international warrant on suspicion that he helped Libya's past
efforts to build a nuclear bomb.
(AP, 11/16/04)

2004 Nov 18, A survey said
Swiss teenagers smoke more cannabis than their peers in every other
European country.
(Reuters, 11/19/04)

2005 Jan 1, A new Swiss law
took effect that legalized the production of absinthe.
(SFC, 11/4/04, p.A2)
2005 Jan 1, Switzerland was
forecast for 2% annual GDP growth with a population at 7.4 million
and GDP per head at $51,490.
(Econ, 1/8/05, p.90)

2005 Jan 9, In Basel,
Switzerland, central bankers, joined by commercial counterparts and
financial regulators from around the globe, opened a 2-day meeting
to discuss ways to ensure smooth economic growth amid worries over
widening U.S. deficits.
(AP, 1/10/05)

2005 Jan 26, The World Economic
Forum, the global business meeting that attracts world leaders and
Hollywood stars, opened in Davos, Switzerland. A Chinese economist
said that China has lost faith in the stability of the US dollar and
would seek to broaden the exchange rate for the yuan to a more
flexible basket of currencies.
(AP, 1/26/05)(SFC, 1/27/05, p.C1)

2005 Jan 30, The World Economic
Forum ended 5 days of talks in Davos, Switz. Chinese Vice Premier
Huang Ju said Chinese per capita income will triple during the next
15 years and there was no reason for the world to fear his country's
emergence as a global giant.
(AP, 1/30/05)

2005 Mar 1, In Geneva, Switz.,
Edouard Stern, French financier and former Lazard banker, was found
dead in his home. Swiss police later arrested Cecile Brossard (36),
his French lover, who confessed to the sex-related killing of banker
Edouard Stern. During her trial in 2009 she said that she lost
control after Stern called her a whore. On June 18, 2009, Brossard
was sentenced to eight and a half years in prison.
(WSJ, 3/3/05, p.A1)(AP, 3/16/05)(WSJ, 4/14/05,
p.A1)(SFC, 6/15/09, p.A2)(AP, 6/18/09)

2005 Mar 4, Swiss police said
they have detained five purported Islamic extremists suspected of
running Web sites that showed the execution of hostages and provided
details of how to make bombs and carry out attacks.
(AP, 3/4/05)

2005 Mar 12, In Lenzerheide,
Switzerland, Bode Miller became the first American in 22 years to
win skiing's overall World Cup title.
(AP, 3/12/06)

2005 Mar 17, Stephane Lambiel
of Switzerland won the men's title at the World Figure Skating
Championships in Moscow.
(AP, 3/17/06)

2005 Apr 17, A Swiss tourist
bus carrying 27 people plunged into an Alpine ravine near the Great
St. Bernard Pass, and at least 100 rescuers descended to the wreck
on ropes to try to aid the injured. 12 people were killed.
(AP, 4/17/05)(AP, 4/17/06)

2005 Apr 28, Swiss engineers
blasted through the final four yards of rock to complete the bore of
the first of two deep rail tunnels under the Swiss Alps linking
north and south Europe. The 21-mile Loetschberg tunnel, part of a
massive construction project to move heavy European Union trucks off
Switzerland's narrow highways and onto transport trains, will
shorten the travel time between Germany and Milan, Italy, by an
hour.
(AP, 4/28/05)

2005 May 31, In Switzerland
Griselidis Real (76), writer and well-known prostitute who
campaigned for the rights and dignity of sex workers, died in
Geneva. In 2009 she was re-buried in the presence of 200 people at
the Cemetery of the Kings, which is reserved for individuals that
have profoundly marked Swiss or international history.
(www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/griselidis-real-493264.html)(AP,
3/10/09)

2005 Jun 5, Swiss voters
approved, by a 55-45% majority, joining the European Union in the
Schengen passport-free travel zone, abolishing checks on the
country's border by 2007. They also granted same-sex couples more
rights.
(AP, 6/6/05)(Econ, 6/11/05, p.48)

2005 Jun 6, IBM and Ecole
Polytechnique of Lausanne, Switz., announced a partnership to begin
building a computer model of the human brain.
(Econ, 6/11/05, p.75)

2005 Aug 20, The 184-pound
"Unspunnenstein," named after the site of Switzerland's most revered
stone-throwing contest, was stolen from a hotel in the central Swiss
city of Interlaken where it was on display before the competition
scheduled for Sept. 3-4.
(AP, 8/20/05)

2005 Aug 25, Rescue workers
began evacuating more people from submerged sections of the Swiss
capital as central and southern Europe struggled with the aftermath
of flooding that has killed at least 42 people.
(AP, 8/25/05)

2005 Sep 1, The Swiss firm
Novartis AG said it is offering $4.5 billion in cash for the
remaining stake in Chiron Corp. to complete its takeover of the
US-based biotech company.
(AP, 9/1/05)

2005 Sep 5, UBS said it will
sell three of Switzerland's oldest private banks and asset manager
GAM to Julius Baer for 5.6 billion Swiss francs ($4.6 billion), to
enable it to focus on its own private banking business.
(AP, 9/5/05)

2005 Sep 25, A majority of the
Swiss electorate voted to allow citizens of the 10 new EU member
states to work in Switzerland, according to the final results of a
national referendum.
(AP, 9/25/05)

2005 Oct 3, Switzerland decided
to extradite Russia's former nuclear minister to the US on charges
of stealing up to $9 million that was intended to improve security
of nuclear plants. Russia has been fighting the US extradition
request for Yevgeny Adamov out of fear that he could reveal nuclear
secrets while facing the charges in the United States.
(AP, 10/3/05)

2005 Oct 17, Serono
Laboratories, a Swiss drug-maker, pleaded guilty to US federal
conspiracy charges and agreed to pay $740 million for kickbacks to
doctors for the AIDS drug Serostim and for manipulating a test for
AIDS patients.
(SFC, 10/18/05, p.E1)

2005 Oct 26, A Swiss court
found Vitaly Kaloyev, a Russian architect, guilty of premeditated
homicide for the Feb 2004 killing of the air traffic controller on
duty at the time of the Jul 1, 2002, midair plane collision in which
his wife and child were lost. Kaloyev was released in 2007.
(AP, 10/26/05)(AP, 7/1/12)

2005 Nov 18, Swiss Reinsurance
Co., the world's second-largest reinsurer, said it will acquire most
of General Electric Co.'s insurance unit for $6.8 billion in cash
and stock.
(AP, 11/18/05)

2005 Nov 22, Nestle SA, the
world's biggest food company, said it has recalled hundreds of
thousands of gallons of baby milk from France, Portugal, Spain and
Italy after traces of ink from the packaging were found in the
product.
(AP, 11/22/05)

2005 Nov 25, Swiss authorities
said they will block major foreign acquisitions by the
telecommunications operator Swisscom because of financial risk to
the state, which holds most of the company's shares.
(AFP, 11/25/05)

2005 Nov 27, Swiss voters
approved a blanket five-year ban on the use of genetically modified
organisms in farming. Switzerland already prohibits most of such
technology from being used in agriculture.
(AP, 11/27/05)

2005 Dec 1, in northern
Switzerland a pack of dogs mauled a boy walking to his kindergarten
class killing him instantly.
(AP, 12/01/05)

2005 Dec 29, Switzerland's top
court ordered the extradition of Yevgeny Adamov, Russia's former
nuclear minister, to his homeland instead of the US, where he's been
indicted for allegedly diverting $9 million in US aid money to his
businesses. The Swiss court made its ruling Dec. 22 but it was made
public Dec 29.
(AP, 12/30/05)

2005 In Geneva the large Hadron
Collider of CERN was expected to be completed for $6 billion. The US
provided over $500 million towards the construction of a the new
atom smasher.
(SFC,12/9/97, p.A9)

2006 Jan 25, The World Economic
Forum opened in Davos, Switzerland. 15 heads of state, top business
leaders and celebrities attended the session to brainstorm on key
issues facing the globe, including high oil prices, Iran's nuclear
ambitions, new business models and the shifting balance of power in
Asia.
(AP, 1/25/06)

2006 Mar 31, Swiss prosecutors
said they have filed charges against 19 former top executives and
board members of the defunct Swissair for their part in the national
airline's 2001 bankruptcy.
(AP, 3/31/06)

2006 Apr 9, A Swiss
investigator has issued an international arrest warrant for Iran's
former intelligence chief in the killing of an exiled Iranian
opposition leader. It demands the arrest of Ali Fallahian,
intelligence minister from 1989-1997, on grounds he "decided and
ordered the execution of Kazem Rajavi." Rajavi was shot to death in
Geneva in 1990.
(AP, 4/9/06)

2006 Jun 7, Swiss senator Dick
Marty, the head of an investigation into alleged CIA clandestine
prisons, said 14 European nations colluded with US intelligence in a
"spider's web" of secret flights and detention centers that violated
international human rights law. Marty asserted that at least 7
European governments were complicit in the transports.
(AP, 6/7/06)(Econ, 6/10/06, p.49)

2006 Jun 19, Swiss
chocolate-maker Nestle AG said it will fatten up its weight-loss
business by buying Jenny Craig Inc. for $600 million.
(AP, 6/19/06)

2006 Jul 1, In Geneva
developing countries emerged from a failed World Trade Organization
meeting more united than ever and warned rich countries not to
undermine the development thrust of the Doha Round of global trade
talks.
(AFP, 7/1/06)

2006 Jul 24, WTO members in
Geneva called a halt to more than five years of commerce
liberalization talks (the Doha talks) as differences over farm aid
proved unbridgeable. The 25-nation EU criticized US intransigence
over agricultural subsidies for the breakdown, while the US blamed
Brazil and India for being inflexible on cutting barriers to
industrial imports and the EU for refusing to make deeper cuts in
its farm import tariffs.
(AP, 7/24/06)

2006 Aug 9, A Justice Ministry
official said Swiss authorities will provide the US with details
from bank accounts US investigators suspect of being used for
terrorist funding.
(AP, 8/9/06)

2006 Sep 14, The Swiss central
bank raised its key Libor interest rate by a quarter of a percentage
point to a range between 1.25% and 2.25% to dampen the threat of
inflation.
(AFP, 9/14/06)

2006 Sep 24, Swiss voters in a
national referendum backed tougher asylum rules put forth by justice
minister Christoph Blocher, despite fears that the new rules will
deny refugees a fair hearing. 68% approved a new immigration law
which was meant to tackle what authorities say is the lack of
integration of many foreigners into Swiss society.
(AP, 9/24/06)(Econ, 9/30/06, p.61)

2006 Oct 26, Sri Lanka's
warring parties arrived in Geneva for their first face-to-face
meeting in eight months as the EU racked up international pressure
for a halt to ethnic bloodshed.
(AP, 10/26/06)

2006 Oct 27, Swiss officials
said authorities have found enough evidence to seek a full
investigation into allegations the CIA was trying to obtain personal
details of about 500 labor union members, most of them Arabs.
(AP, 10/27/06)

2006 Nov, Swiss-based Novartis,
the world’s 4th largest pharmaceutical company, announced plans to
invest $100 million in a new research facility in Shanghai.
(Econ, 11/11/06, p.72)

2006 Dec 8, In Basel,
Switzerland, a 3.4 magnitude tremor was accidentally triggered by
engineers drilling deep into the Earth's crust to tap its inner
heat, in the world's search for new sources of energy.
(AP, 8/4/07)

2007 Jan 22, Scientists warned
that glaciers will all but disappear from the Alps by 2050, and that
most would be gone by 2037.
(SFC, 1/23/07, p.A4)

2007 Jan 24, Some 2,400
registered participants gathered at Davos, Switzerland, for the
4-day World Economic Forum, whose theme this year was: "The Shifting
Power Equation."
(AP, 1/24/07)

2007 Jan 20, Richard
Vollenweider (1922-2007), Swiss scientist, died. He developed
methods for quantifying the eutrophication of freshwater. His
methods were used to save Lake Erie and helped form the basis of the
1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Act.
(http://tinyurl.com/ygrc3p)(WSJ, 2/3/07, p.A8)

2007 Jan 27, In Switzerland
major powers at Davos agreed to resume global free trade talks. A
meeting of the world's top commercial powers yielded only a vague
pledge of commitment to global trade liberalization efforts, a
disappointment after business and political leaders called for
progress in the World Trade Organization talks.
(AP, 1/27/07)

2007 Feb 2, A ruling by
Switzerland's highest court opened up the possibility that people
with serious mental illnesses could be helped by doctors to take
their own lives.
(AP, 2/2/07)

2007 Feb 13, In Geneva the US
clashed with China and Russia during a disarmament debate over how
to prevent an arms race in outer space, and Washington criticized
Beijing for its recent test of an anti-satellite missile. Russia and
China, in turn, condemned the "one state" that refuses to consider a
treaty banning space weapons, a reference to the US.
(AP, 2/13/07)

2007 Feb 28, A Swiss court
acquitted seven men of providing logistical support to a Saudi
terror cell in the first Swiss trial of alleged al-Qaida associates.
(AP, 2/28/07)

2007 Mar 4, Avalanches killed
at least five skiers in the Swiss and French Alps following days of
heavy snow.
(AP, 3/5/07)

2007 Mar 9, A prominent Turkish
politician was convicted of breaching Swiss anti-racism laws by
saying that the early 20th-century killing of Armenians could not be
described as genocide. Perincek was charged with breaking Swiss law
by denying during a visit to Switzerland in 2005 that the World War
I-era killings of up to 1.5 million Armenians amounted to genocide.
He was ordered to pay a fine of $2,450 and was given a suspended
penalty of $7,360.
(AP, 3/10/07)

2007 Mar 29, A Swiss man was
jailed for 10 years for insulting Thailand's revered king by
vandalizing his portraits during a drunken spree.
(AP, 3/29/07)

2007 Apr 12, The Swiss-based
Nestle SA, the world's biggest food and drink company, said it will
buy Gerber Products Co. from pharmaceutical maker Novartis SA for
$5.5 billion, giving it the largest share of the global baby food
market.
(AP, 4/12/07)

2007 May 13, One of
Switzerland's central bankers said further increases in Swiss
interest rates are still on the cards, while also praising the
management of the euro currency.
(AP, 5/13/07)

2007 May 24, In Switzerland an
arson fire gutted the interior of Hekhal Haness Synagogue, Geneva's
largest synagogue.
(AP, 6/1/07)

2007 May, A Geneva court
temporarily blocked the release of some of the US$6.2 million
stashed in Switzerland by Duvalier. Many in Haiti considered the
money to have been stolen from public funds before Duvalier was
ousted.
(AP, 1/17/11)

2007 Jun 7, In Switzerland all
19 managers and consultants accused in the collapse of former
national carrier Swissair were acquitted and will receive
compensation totaling more than $2 million.
(AP, 6/7/07)

2007 Jun 20, In Switzerland 2
people accused of running al-Qaida-linked Web sites that showed the
slaying of hostages and gave details of how to make bombs and carry
out attacks went on trial. Moez Garsallaoui (39), a Tunisian based
in Switzerland, and Malika El Aroud 948), the Belgian-born widow of
an al-Qaida suicide bomber, appeared in court on charges that
included providing support for terrorists.
(AP, 6/20/07)

2007 Jun 27, A Swiss
investigator said European governments have built a "wall of
silence" surrounding their complicity with a CIA program that
included holding terrorist suspects in secret jails.
(AP, 6/27/07)

2007 Jul 5, Peter Wuffli, chief
executive of UBS, a Swiss-based global bank, was dismissed. In May
UBS shut down a hedge-fund operation, which invested in American
mortgages, at a cost of $425 million.
(Econ, 7/14/07, p.77)

2007 Jul 12, In the Swiss Alps
6 soldiers on an alpine training exercise were killed when an
avalanche sent them plummeting thousands of feet into a valley.
(AP, 7/12/07)

2007 Jul 23, An attempt to
break an aviation speed record went horribly wrong when a small
"experimental" plane crashed through an apartment building in the
Swiss city of Basel, killing the pilot and injuring at least three
other people.
(AP, 7/23/07)

2007 Aug, The Swiss government
extended a freeze on Duvalier's funds for a year. Many in Haiti
considered the money to have been stolen from public funds before
Duvalier was ousted.
(AP, 1/17/11)

2007 Sep 24, The Swiss
drugmaker Novartis AG said that the European Commission had approved
its Exelon skin patch to treat Alzheimer's disease.
(AP, 9/24/07)

2007 Oct 1, Swiss banking giant
UBS warned that the crisis in the US housing market had cost it
around 4.0 billion Swiss francs, as it announced a major management
shakeup and plans to cut 1,500 jobs.
(AP, 10/1/07)

2007 Oct 18,
Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis announced more than 1,200
job losses in the US after its third quarter results weakened on
sharper competition from generic drugs.
(AP, 10/18/07)

2007 Oct 21,
A Swiss nationalist party rode an anti-immigrant wave to the
best showing of any party in parliamentary elections since 1919,
while the Greens made gains by appealing to environmental concerns.
The Swiss People's Party (SVP), led by justice minister Christoph
Blocher, won 62 seats and received 29% of the vote, after a bitter
campaign blaming foreigners for much of the country's crime.
(AP, 10/21/07)(AP, 10/22/07)(Econ, 10/27/07,
p.62)
2007 Oct 21,
In Brazil activists trying to invade a 304-acre biotech seed
farm, owned by the Swiss firm Syngenta AG, clashed with guards
and at least two people were shot dead.
(AP, 10/22/07)
2007 Oct 21, Ernst Ludwig
Ehrlich (86), a Jewish religious philosopher, died at his home in
Basel, Switz. He had escaped the Nazis and became a European
bridge-builder between Christians and Jews.
(AP, 10/24/07)

2007 Oct 30, Switzerland's
largest bank, UBS, reported its first quarterly loss in five years
after its third quarter results were hit in the financial crisis
caused by the ailing US home loans market.
(AP, 10/30/07)

2007 Nov 30, In Geneva the
International Red Cross said 7 countries including the US and
Britain have joined in a new move to ensure the safety of
journalists in war zones. France, Germany, Australia, Canada and
Denmark also committed themselves to accept a new nonbinding accord
on protecting correspondents in line with the Geneva Conventions on
the conduct of warfare.
(AP, 12/1/07)

2007 Dec 10, Swiss banking
giant UBS AG said it will write off a further $10 billion on losses
in the US subprime lending market and will raise capital by selling
substantial stakes to Singapore and an unnamed investor in the
Middle East.
(AP, 12/10/07)

2008 Jan 24, In Davos,
Switzerland, fears of world recession briefly took a back seat at
the World Economic Forum, where leaders from Afghanistan, Pakistan
and Iraq focused on how to establish security in their volatile
regions. Afghan Pres. Karzai stressed how extremists used economic
exploitation to recruit bombers.
(AP, 1/24/08)(AFP, 1/24/08)
2008 Jan 24, In Switzerland the
country's supreme court said prosecutors acted within the law when
they froze funds belonging to the Russian central bank at the behest
of a Swiss firm. The funds were frozen over a legal dispute with
Geneva-based trading firm Noga dating back to the end of the Soviet
era.
(AP, 1/24/08)

2008 Jan 25, At Davos,
Switzerland, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates announced at the World
Economic Forum that his foundation would give $306 million to use
green technology and farming techniques to boost millions out of
hunger and poverty.
(AP, 1/25/08)

2008 Jan 30, Subprime-related
problems at UBS AG mounted as the Swiss bank unveiled $4 billion in
new write-downs in a surprise statement and sank deep into the red
for the year, depressing its shares.
(AP, 1/30/08)

2008 Feb 6, In eastern
Switzerland 2 paintings by Pablo Picasso worth nearly five million
Swiss francs (4.5 million dollars, 3.1 million euros) were stolen
from a museum. The two oil paintings, "Tete de Cheval" from 1962 and
"Verre et pichet" from 1944, were stolen from a cultural centre in
the eastern town of Pfaeffikon.
(AFP, 2/8/08)

2008 Feb 10, In Switzerland
armed robbers stole paintings by Cezanne, Degas, van Gogh and Monet
worth $163.2 million from the E.G. Buehrle Collection in Zurich, one
of Europe's finest private museums for Impressionist and
post-Impressionist art. 2 of the paintings were recovered in an
abandoned car on Feb 18.
(AP, 2/11/08)(AP, 2/19/08)

2008 Feb 14, In Switzerland UBS
AG posted a 4th-quarter net loss of $11.28 billion, and a loss for
the entire year, besieged by investments in US subprime mortgages.
Chairman Marcel Ospel announced his resignation on Feb 27.
(AP, 2/14/08)(Econ, 4/5/08, p.72)

2008 Apr 1, In Switzerland UBS
AG's chairman abruptly resigned as the Swiss bank reported a
first-quarter loss of $12.1 billion and said it would seek $15.1
billion in new capital.
(AP, 4/1/08)

2008 Apr 7, Switzerland's
Novartis AG said it will spend about $39 billion in a two-step bid
for a majority stake in U.S. eye-care company Alcon.
(AP, 4/7/08)

2008 Apr 23, Switzerland said
it had frozen the assets of a further 12 Iranian companies in
accordance with new UN sanctions aimed at stopping Tehran's alleged
nuclear program.
(AP, 4/23/08)

2008 Apr 29, Albert Hofmann
(102), the father of the mind-altering drug LSD, died. His medical
discovery inspired, and arguably corrupted, millions in the 1960s
hippie generation. The Swiss chemist discovered lysergic acid
diethylamide-25 in 1938 while studying the medicinal uses of a
fungus found on wheat and other grains at the Sandoz pharmaceuticals
firm in Basel. He became the first human guinea pig of the drug when
a tiny amount of the substance seeped onto his finger during a
laboratory experiment on April 16, 1943. Hofmann to LSD for the last
time when he was 97.
(AP, 4/30/08)(Econ, 5/31/08, p.21)

2008 May 6, Swiss bank UBS,
hard hit by the US subprime crisis, reported a first-quarter loss of
$10.97 billion and said it will slash almost 7 percent of its work
force.
(AP, 5/6/08)

2008 May 14, A Swiss pilot
strapped on a jet-powered wing and leaped from a plane for the first
public demonstration of the homemade device, turning figure eights
and soaring high above the Alps.
(AP, 5/15/08)

2008 Jun 1, Voters in
Switzerland rejected a plan to give local communities the power to
decide which immigrants should be granted Swiss citizenship.
Currently, after living at least 12 years on Swiss soil, foreigners
who wish to acquire Swiss citizenship face a naturalization
procedure that includes a knowledge of the country's traditions,
history and culture.
(AFP, 6/1/08)

2008 Jun 4, Swiss
pharmaceutical Novartis announced it had bought Protez
Pharmaceuticals for $100 million (64.8 million euros), thus
acquiring the rights to a new antibiotic.
(AP, 6/4/08)

2008 Jun 19, Bradley
Birkenfeld, a former UBS executive, pleaded guilty to helping
clients hide hundreds of millions of dollars and evade US taxes in a
case that is part of a probe into whether the Swiss banking giant
did the same for other wealthy individuals.
(AP, 6/19/08)(Econ, 7/5/08, p.79)

2008 Jun 26, Swiss police said
they have arrested about 30 people in a crackdown on a large drug
trafficking network.
(AP, 6/27/08)

2008 Jul 15, In Switzerland
Hannibal Kadhafi (32), the son of Libya’s leader, was arrested along
with his wife Aline at a luxury hotel in Geneva after the servants,
a Moroccan and a Tunisian, alleged they had been abused by the
couple. The 2-day detention led to reprisals by Libya. Days after
Hannibal Kadhafi’s arrest, Swiss businessmen Max Goeldi and Rachid
Hamdani were detained in Libya on alleged visa violations. The
servants later dropped their legal complaints after receiving some
compensation. In November, 2009, Goeldi and Hamdani were handed over
to the Swiss embassy in Tripoli. Libya then announced that they
would go on trial on accusations of tax evasion and violating
residency laws.
(AP, 9/2/08)(AP, 11/9/09)(AP, 11/12/09)

2008 Jul 17, An official of the
Swiss bank UBS announced that it was halting its offshore banking
services for US citizens after it came under scathing criticism for
facilitating massive tax evasion.
(AFP, 7/18/08)

2008 Jul 24, Libya said it will
halt fuel supplies to key oil client Switzerland in the latest
reprisal for last week's brief detention in Geneva of a son of
Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi.
(AFP, 7/24/08)

2008 Sep 3, Swiss prosecutors
said police have broken up an Internet child pornography ring
operating in at least four European countries where men exchanged
details about their contacts with young girls. In all investigators
said they had identified 600 people in Germany, 40 in Austria, 13 in
Switzerland and four in Liechtenstein using the forum.
(AP, 9/3/08)

2008 Sep 10, In Geneva the
Large Hadron Collider, the world's largest particle collider, passed
its first major tests by firing two beams of protons in opposite
directions around a 17-mile (27-kilometer) underground ring in what
scientists hope is the next great step to understanding the makeup
of the universe. On Sep 19 it started leaking helium and had to be
turned off. The technical problems delayed for at least two months
the quest for scientists to learn more about the nature of the
universe and the origins of all matter.
(AP, 9/10/08)(AP, 9/20/08)(Econ, 9/27/08, p.96)
2008 Sep 10, Ruedi Rymann (75),
a farmer and cheesemaker and renowned yodeler, died at his home in
Giswil, Switzerland. In 2007 Viewers of a Swiss television series
devoted to popular national music voted Rymann’s “Dr Schacher
Seppli" as the greatest Swiss hit of all.
(SFC, 10/9/08,
p.B8)(www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmsy6wA-T0o)

2008 Sep 26, Yves Rossy of
Switzerland leapt from a plane and into the record books, crossing
the English channel in 13 minutes on a homemade jet-propelled wing.
(AP, 9/26/08)

2008 Oct 6, Switzerland's top
prosecutor charged 10 people with laundering more than US$1 billion
dollars (1.349 billion euros) during a decade-long mafia cigarette
smuggling operation. Authorities said they broke up the smuggling
ring in 2004.
(AP, 10/6/08)

2008 Oct 7, Harvard Univ. said
medical device billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, chairman of Swiss-based
Synthes Inc., had donated $125 million, the largest one-time gift in
the history of the school. In 2004 Wyss had donated $25 million to
support doctoral programs at Harvard.
(WSJ, 10/8/08, p.A6)

2008 Oct 8, Six central banks
jolted markets by cutting interest rates together in an attempt to
shore up confidence in the world's crisis-stricken financial system.
The US Fed reduced its key rate from 2% to 1.5%. The Bank of England
unexpectedly slashed its key lending rate by a half-point to 4.5%.
The Bank of Canada cut its key interest rate by 50 basis points to
2.5%. China also cut its key interest rates for a second time in
less than one month to 6.9%. The European Central Bank sliced its
rate by half a point to 3.75%. Sweden, and Switzerland also cut
rates. Earlier in a day Japan's Nikkei showed its biggest drop since
the October, 1987 stock market crash. The IMF said the world economy
is entering a major downturn.
(AP, 10/8/08)(AFP, 10/8/08)(Econ, 10/11/08,
p.100)

2008 Oct 9, The Libyan oil
company Tamoil said the Libyan government has again decided to halt
oil deliveries to Switzerland.
(AFP, 10/9/08)

2008 Oct 10, The Libyan news
agency JANA said Libya will withdraw $7 billion of assets in Swiss
banks, cut economic ties with Switzerland and stop supplying it with
oil to protest against poor treatment of Libyan diplomats and
businessmen.
(AP, 10/10/08)

2008 Oct 12, Pope Benedict XVI
gave the Roman Catholic church four new saints, including an Indian
woman whose canonization is seen as a morale boost to Christians in
India who have suffered Hindu violence. They included Sister
Alphonsa (1910-1946) of the Immaculate Conception, a nun from
southern India and India’s first woman saint; Gaetano Errico
(1791-1860), a Neapolitan priest who founded a missionary order in
the 19th century; Sister Maria Bernarda, born as Verena Buetler
(1848-1924) in Switzerland, who worked as a nun in Ecuador and
Colombia; and Narcisa de Jesus Martillo Moran (1832-1869), a 19th
century laywoman from Ecuador who helped the sick and the poor.
(AP, 10/12/08)

2008 Oct 13, Swiss authorities
said they have found high concentrations of melamine in biscuits
from Thailand and Sri Lanka and have called on other European
countries to withdraw the products.
(AP, 10/13/08)
2008 Oct 13, Stock markets
rejoiced after governments worldwide launched multibillion-dollar
bailouts to shore up banks, and Britain called for a new Bretton
Woods agreement to reshape the world financial system. The US
Central Bank said it would provide unlimited dollars the European
Central Bank, the Bank of England and the Swiss National Bank.
Britain committed £37 billion ($64 billion) to capitalize its big
banks. Wall Street rebounded with the biggest stock rally since the
Great Depression. The DJIA rose 936 points to close at 9,387.61, its
largest point gain ever and one of its largest percentage increases.
(Reuters, 10/13/08)(SFC, 10/14/08, p.A1)(WSJ,
10/14/08, p.A3)(Econ, 10/18/08, p.83)

2008 Oct 30, A Swiss court
convicted 2 brothers from Kosovo of running a massive drug smuggling
ring that prosecutors said supplied Western Europe with up to half
of its heroin. Ragip and Kemal Shabani channeled 1.5 tons of heroin
through Europe from the mid-1990s until 2003, when they were shut
down.
(AP, 10/30/08)

2008 Nov 1, Jacques Piccard
(b.1922), a scientist and underwater explorer who plunged deeper
beneath the ocean than any other man, died in Geneva, Switzerland.
(AP, 11/1/08)

2008 Oct 10, Heinz Imhof, known
as the Father of Syngenta, died, He orchestrated the 2000 merger of
the crop-protection and seeds divisions of Switzerland’s Novartis AG
and Anglo-Swedish Astra-Zeneca PLC, creating Sygenta, the biggest
agrichemical business in the world.
(WSJ, 11/8/08, p.A6)

2008 Nov 18, Spanish artist
Miquel Barcelo unveiled his lavish, $23 million ceiling painting at
the European headquarters of the United Nations in Switzerland, a
project that has evoked controversy over its hefty price tag.
(AP, 11/18/08)

2008 Dec 12, Switzerland became
the 25th member of the passport-free zone of the Schengen countries,
after interior and justice ministers of the 27 EU member states
formally approved the accession of this non-EU country on Nov 27.
The number of Chinese visitors quickly soared.
(www.eda.admin.ch/eda/en/home/reps/eur/vbel/ref_visinf/visbel.html)(Econ,
12/18/10, p.116)

2008 Herve Falciani, a native
of Monaco, walked out of a Geneva branch of HSBC, where he had
worked for three years, with five CD-ROMS containing data on
thousands of account holders.
(Econ, 10/19/13, p.79)
2008 The ATLAS particle
detector at CERN, Switzerland, was completed.
(Econ, 4/27/13,
p.66)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ATLAS_experiment)

2009 Jan 9, Lithuania’s FlyLAL
airline, privatized in 2005, announced that SCH Swiss Capital
Holdings, a Switzerland-based firm, has purchased it for $1 million
and debt of about 1 million euros. On Jan 17 FlyLAL airline said it
has suspended its operations after a buyout deal by Swiss investment
firm SCH Swiss Capital Holdings failed.
(AP, 1/9/09)(AP, 1/17/09)

2009 Jan 15, Swiss
pharmaceutical giant Novartis AG said it has secured a $486 million
contract to build a new flu vaccine plant in North Carolina.
(AP, 1/15/09)
2009 Jan 15, A Luxembourg court
ordered Swiss bank UBS AG to pay French financial company Oddo &
Cie euro30 million ($40 million) it had invested in a fund linked to
the alleged fraud perpetrated by US financier Bernard Madoff.
(AP, 1/15/09)

2009 Jan 21, Germany banned the
production, sale or possession of a synthetic marijuana-like drug
known as "Spice," effective as of Jan 22, becoming the 4th nation to
ban the substance, marketed as an herbal room-freshener, after
Austria, the Netherlands and Switzerland.
(AP, 1/21/09)

2009 Jan 28, In Switzerland
some 2,500 business and political leaders met at Davos for the World
Economic Forum, as the worst financial crisis since the Great
Depression served to mute the enthusiasm of previous years. China’s
Premier Wen Jiabao and Russia’s PM Vladimir Putin blamed the US-led
financial system for the global economic slump.
(AP, 1/28/09)(WSJ, 1/29/09, p.A1)

2009 Jan 29, Swiss police said
they stumbled across a large marijuana plantation last year while
using Google Earth, the search engine company's satellite mapping
software. They arrested 16 people and seized 1.1 tons (1.2 US tons)
of marijuana as well as cash and valuables worth 900,000 Swiss
francs ($780,000).
(AP, 1/29/09)
2009 Jan 29, At the economic
forum in Davos, Switzerland, Israel’s Pres. Peres (85) traded
accusations with Turkey’s PM Erdogan, who declared: “You kill
people," and criticized Israel’s blockade of Gaza. Erdogan stalked
off stage after being cut short during the exchange.
(SFC, 1/30/09, p.A4)(WSJ, 1/30/09, p.A1)

2009 Jan, Four tourists, two
Swiss, a German and a Briton, were kidnapped on the Mali-Niger
border. They were transferred to Al-Qaida's North Africa branch,
which asked for a ransom and the release of a radical Islamist
preacher held in Britain. A Swiss and a German tourist were released
in April. Edwin Dyer of Britain, was killed by his captors on May
31. The 2nd Swiss citizen, Werner Greiner, was released in July.
(AP, 4/23/09)(AP, 7/12/09)

2009 Feb 1, In Switzerland the
5-day World Economic Forum at Davos ended with the realization that
the depth of the global financial crises is still unknown and that
the solution remains elusive.
(SFC, 2/2/09, p.A10)

2009 Feb 8, Voters in
Switzerland approved an expanded labor deal with the European Union
that allows Romanians and Bulgarians to work in the Alpine republic.
(AP, 2/8/09)

2009 Feb 9, In Switzerland
Paula Oliviera (26), a lawyer from Brazil, claimed she was attacked
by three skinheads, one with a Nazi symbol tattooed on the back of
his head, outside a Zurich train station. On Feb 13 investigators
said was not pregnant and probably cut wounds into herself.
(AP, 2/13/09)

2009 Feb 19, Banking giant UBS
said it has agreed to pay $780 million and turn over once-secret
Swiss banking records to settle allegations it conspired to defraud
the US government of taxes owed by thousands of American clients.
(AP, 2/19/09)

2009 Feb 20, Banking details of
eight American clients of Switzerland's largest bank were sent to US
authorities along with the names of more than 240 other American
clients of UBS. A Swiss court order blocking the move came too late
to stop the action.
(AP, 2/21/09)

2009 Mar 9, Helg Sgarbi, a man
dubbed "the Swiss gigolo" by the German media, was sentenced to six
years in prison for defrauding BMW heiress Susanne Klatten (46),
Germany's richest woman, of euro7 million ($9 million) and
attempting to blackmail her for tens of millions more.
(AP, 3/9/09)

2009 Mar 13, The Swiss
government said it would cooperate on cases of international tax
evasion, breaking with a long-standing tradition of protecting
wealthy foreigners accused of hiding billions of dollars in the
Alpine nation.
(AP, 3/13/09)

2009 Apr 3, The Swiss central
bank said UBS has transferred its final installment of toxic assets
to a special state aid fund, bringing the total to 38.7 billion
dollars.
(AP, 4/3/09)

2009 Apr 6, The US Federal
Reserve said it will supply new lines of credit worth up to $287
billion to the central banks of Japan, Switzerland, the United
Kingdom and EU.
(AP, 4/6/09)

2009 Apr 20, A UN racism
conference opened in Geneva. Iran’s Pres. Ahmadinejad accused Israel
of being the "most cruel and racist regime," sparking a walkout by
angry Western diplomats. The US, Australia, Canada, Germany, Israel,
Italy, Netherlands, New Zealand and Poland boycotted the conference
out of concern that it could be used by Muslim countries to
criticize Israel and to limit free speech when it comes to
criticizing their religion.
(AP, 4/19/09)(AP, 4/20/09)

2009 Apr 21, In Geneva over 100
countries agreed on a declaration to combat racism and related forms
of intolerance worldwide. The US was not among them, prompting sharp
criticism from African-American groups participating in the UN's
second global conference on racism.
(AP, 4/21/09)

2009 Laurent Keller, Swiss
prof. of ecology, and Elisabeth Gordon authored “The Lives of Ants."
The English translation was by James Grieve.
(Econ, 4/11/09, p.85)

2009 Apr 26, Voters in the
heart of the Swiss Alps passed legislation banning naked hiking
after dozens of mostly German nudists started rambling through their
picturesque region.
(AP, 4/26/09)

2009 May 12, In Switzerland a
rare 7.03-carat blue diamond sold for 9.3 million Swiss francs (more
than $8.4 million), the highest price ever for a gem of its kind,
according to Sotheby's.
(AP, 5/12/09)

2009 May 29, In Geneva a
65-nation Conference on Disarmament broke a dozen years of deadlock
and opened the way to negotiate a new nuclear arms control treaty.
(AP, 5/29/09)
2009 May 29, In Argentina Swiss
architect Peter Zumthor (66) received the 2009 Pritzker Architecture
Prize. He compared his creative process to the arc of a love affair.
(AP, 5/30/09)

2009 Jun 12, Swiss
pharmaceuticals company Novartis AG said it has successfully
produced a first batch of swine flu vaccine weeks ahead of
expectations.
(AP, 6/12/09)

2009 Jun 28, Swiss police said
they have uncovered a child pornography ring involving more than
2,000 people in 78 countries.
(AP, 6/28/09)

2009 Jul 1, Switzerland said it
had refused a request to extradite a Rwandan national wanted in his
own country for alleged genocide and war crimes. Other European
countries have also refused extradition requests arguing that
suspects cannot at present receive a fair trial in the country.
(AFP, 7/1/09)

2009 Jul 8, Switzerland's
government said it would forbid the Swiss bank UBS AG from complying
with any court-ordered transfer of data on tens of thousands of
American clients to the US government, and would consider seizing
documents to prevent that.
(AP, 7/8/09)

2009 Jul 10, In Switzerland
British conductor Edward Downes (b.1924) died with his wife Joan
(74) at an assisted suicide clinic. He was a longtime stalwart at
the Royal Opera and maestro of the first-ever performance at
Sydney's iconic Opera House.
(AP, 7/14/09)

2009 Jul 12, Swiss police
divers harpooned a zander fish, which was 70 centimeters (two feet
three inches) long and weighed eight kilos (17.5 pounds), after it
bit six swimmers over the weekend in Lac Majeur.
(AFP, 7/13/09)

2009 Aug 3, In Switzerland
there was an arson attack at Novartis CEO Daniel Vasella's lodge in
Bach, Austria. An attack on his mother's grave took place a week
earlier. The next day drug maker Novartis said animal rights
militants were responsible.
(AP, 8/4/09)

2009 Aug 14, A Swiss court
backed the government's plan to give aid agencies 7 million Swiss
francs ($6 million) seized from bank accounts linked to Haiti's
former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier. The Duvalier
family, which wants to reclaim the money, can now appeal the case to
Switzerland's highest court. The accounts have been blocked since
2002.
(AP, 8/14/09)

2009 Aug 20, Swiss President
Hans-Rudolf Merz and Libyan PM al-Baghdadi Ali al-Mahmoudi signed an
accord pledging to restore relations between the two countries and
to have Hannibal Gadhafi July 15, 2008, arrest examined by a joint
arbitration tribunal in London. The next day Merz defended his
apology to Libya for the arrest of Moammar Gadhafi's son, saying it
was the only way to secure the release of two Swiss citizens
detained by Tripoli.
(AP, 8/21/09)

2009 Sep 24, Swiss lawmakers
decided not to join the European Union's anti-piracy efforts, amid
concern that participating in the mission off Somalia could violate
the Alpine nation's long-standing neutrality.
(AP, 9/24/09)

2009 Sep 26, In Switzerland
director Roman Polanski (76) was taken into custody on a 31-year-old
US arrest warrant, where he traveled to receive an award at the
Zurich Film Festival for his lifetime work as a director. Polanski
fled the United States in 1978, a year after pleading guilty to
unlawful sexual intercourse with a 13-year-old girl in 1977.
(AP, 9/27/09)(SFC, 9/30/09, p.A4)

2009 Oct 1, In Switzerland
senior American and Iranian delegates met one-on-one during a lunch
break at seven-nation talks in Geneva. Iran brought a broad range of
geopolitical issues to the table, while the six powers, the
permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany, sought to soften
Iran's resistance to freezing its uranium enrichment program. Iran
accepted a demand to allow UN inspectors into its covertly built
enrichment plant.
(AP, 10/1/09)(AP, 10/2/09)

2009 Oct 8, French police
arrested Adlene Hicheur, a nuclear physicist in Vienne, on suspicion
that he had links to terrorist organizations in Algeria. The man had
been working on analysis projects with the LHCb experiment at CERN
since 2003.
(AP, 10/9/09)(AFP, 3/29/12)

2009 Oct 9, Jacques Chessex
(b.1934), one of French-speaking Switzerland's leading novelists and
the first non-Frenchman to receive the prestigious Prix Goncourt,
died. He was honored in 1973 with the Prix Goncourt literary award
for his novel "L'ogre" ("The Ogre"), a largely autobiographical
account of a difficult father-son relationship.
(AP, 10/10/09)

2009 Oct 10, Armenia and Turkey
signed a deal in Switzerland to establish diplomatic ties ending a
century of enmity. To take effect, the agreements must be ratified
by the Turkish and Armenian parliaments, but it faced stiff
opposition in both countries.
(AP, 10/11/09)

2009 Oct 14, It was reported
that Swiss researchers have found that Alpine glaciers melting under
the impact of climate change are releasing highly toxic pollutants
that had been absorbed by the ice for decades.
(AFP, 10/14/09)

2009 Oct 23, Swiss and US
authorities said the US has asked Switzerland to hand over Roman
Polanski to authorities in California, where he could serve up to
two years in prison for having sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl.
(AP, 10/23/09)

2009 Nov 2, The Swiss
government said it has handed banking documents over to Argentina in
a $25 million dollar corruption probe linked to former President
Carlos Menem and French defense company Thales.
(AP, 11/2/09)

2009 Nov 3, Britain pressed
ahead with a fresh wave of restructuring in its crisis-ravaged
banking system, as Lloyds Banking Group PLC sought at least 21
billion pounds ($34.2 billion) through a record share issue and debt
swap. World stock markets mostly fell amid renewed concerns about
the banking sector after Britain's Royal Bank of Scotland PLC got
more government help and Switzerland's UBS AG booked another massive
charge.
(AP, 11/3/09)

2009 Nov 20, Swiss authorities
said that they had ordered some 350 million dollars of assets to be
seized from the son of the late Nigerian dictator Sani Abacha for
graft.
(AFP, 11/20/09)
2009 Nov 20, In Geneva, Sw.,
CERN scientists restarted the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider
(LHC) following more than a year of repairs. They were surprised
that they could so quickly get beams of protons whizzing near the
speed of light during the restart.
(AP, 11/21/09)

2009 Nov 23, In Geneva the
world's largest atom smasher made another leap forward Monday by
circulating beams of protons in opposite directions at the same time
and causing the first particle collisions in the $10 billion machine
after more than a year of repairs.
(AP, 11/23/09)

2009 Nov 25, Yves Rossy, a
Swiss adventurer, landed in the Atlantic after trying to soar from
Morocco to Spain on jet-powered wings.
(SFC, 11/26/09, p.A2)

2009 Nov 26, The Swiss Justice
Ministry said Roman Polanski will be placed under house arrest at
his Alpine chalet as soon as possible, announcing it would not
appeal a court's decision to release the 76-year-old director on
bail.
(AP, 11/26/09)

2009 Nov 29, Switzerland held a
nationwide referendum on a proposal by the right-wing Swiss People’s
Party to ban Muslim minarets. Swiss voters approved the ban. The
four minarets already attached to mosques in the country are not
affected by the initiative.
(SFC, 11/28/09, p.A4)(AP, 11/29/09)

2009 Nov 30, In Switzerland the
world's largest atom smasher broke the world record for proton
acceleration Monday, firing particle beams with 20 percent more
power than the American lab that previously held the record.
(AP, 11/30/09)

2009 Dec 1, Libya sentenced two
Swiss businessmen to 16 months in prison and a fine, in a row
stemming from the arrest in Geneva last year of Libyan leader Moamer
Kadhafi's son.
(AP, 12/2/09)

2009 Dec 4, In Switzerland
Roman Polanski took refuge at his snowbound chalet after being
granted bail under house arrest, while he fights extradition to the
US on a child sex case.
(AP, 12/4/09)

2009 Dec 9, In Switzerland the
world's largest atom smasher recorded its first high energy
collision of protons.
(SFC, 12/10/09, p.A2)

2009 Dec 16, The Swiss
government said it will take in one detainee from the US detention
facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
(AP, 12/16/09)

2009 Dec 17, Hannibal Kadhafi,
the son of the Libyan leader, filed a civil lawsuit for "protection
of personality" against the Swiss canton of Geneva and a local
newspaper over the publication of police mugshots taken when he was
arrested in Switzerland in July, 2008.
(AFP, 12/23/09)

2009 Dec 23, Nestle, the
Swiss-based food giant, said Zimbabwean government officials and
police had made an "unannounced visit" to the plant on Dec 19,
forcing staff to take delivery of a tanker of milk from
non-contracted suppliers. "Since under such circumstances normal
operations and the safety of employees are no longer guaranteed,
Nestle decided to temporarily shut down the factory."
(AFP, 12/23/09)

2009 Switzerland changed its
customs law and required collectors to detail the contents of their
storage lockers.
(Economist, 9/1/12, p.73)

2010 Jan 3, In Switzerland
avalanches killed at least four skiers and a rescue doctor. Two of
the avalanches occurred in Diemtig Valley, the first hitting a group
of skiers, the second the rescuers who came to their aid. A third
avalanche buried two skiers near Switzerland's borders with France
and Italy.
(AP, 1/4/10)

2010 Jan 12, Novartis, a Swiss
drug company, announced its decision to spend $24 million to secure
exclusive licenses and options on drug delivery technologies
developed by Proteus Biomedical, a California start-up.
(Econ, 1/16/10, p.62)
2010 Jan 12, Switzerland's
highest court ruled that $4.6 million seized from bank accounts
linked to Haiti's former dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier
can be handed over to his family. The decision was not published
until Feb 3. Many in Haiti considered that money to be stolen from
public funds. Duvalier was ousted in 1986.
(AP, 2/3/10)

2010 Jan 18, Swiss Reinsurance
Co. said it transferred part of its US life insurance business to
American investor Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc. for 1.3
billion Swiss francs ($1.27 billion) to free up capital and invest
it more profitably.
(AP, 1/18/10)

2010 Jan 19, Swiss bank Credit
Suisse said that it would reduce bonuses paid to its top executives
in London by about 30% in response to a tax announced last month by
British authorities.
(AP, 1/19/10)

2010 Jan 22, A Swiss court
ruled that Switzerland cannot hand over files on 26 suspected tax
cheats to US authorities because their failure to declare assets
does not constitute fraud under Swiss law.
(SFC, 1/23/10, p.A2)

2010 Jan 26, The US Justice
Department said an Uzbek detainee held at the US military prison at
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba has been sent to Switzerland.
(Reuters, 1/26/10)

2010 Jan 29, At Davos,
Switzerland, Microsoft co-founder and his wife said The Bill and
Melinda Gates Foundation will donate $10 billion over the next
decade to research new vaccines and bring them to the world's
poorest countries.
(AP, 1/29/10)

2010 Jan 30, In Davos,
Switzerland, government regulators from the US and Europe laid out
their financial reform plans before a skeptical banking industry,
asking financiers for input but adamant that change was coming with
or without their support.
(AP, 1/30/10)

2010 Jan 31, Switzerland's
justice minister warned in an interview that top bank UBS could
collapse if sensitive talks with the US over a high-profile tax
fraud investigation fall through.
(AP, 1/31/10)
2010 Jan 31, In Davos,
Switzerland, the world's foremost gathering of business and
government leaders wrapped up a five-day meeting with widespread
agreement that a fragile recovery is under way but no consensus on
what's going to spur job growth and prevent another global economic
meltdown.
(AP, 1/31/10)
2010 Jan 31, A Libyan appeal
court overturned a jail term slapped on Swiss businessman Rashid
Hamdani on a charge of overstaying his visa, easing a Tripoli-Bern
diplomatic spat.
(AFP, 1/31/10)

2010 Feb 2, Germany and
Switzerland headed for a fresh spat over banking secrecy after
Berlin decided to buy a disc said to hold details of some 1,500
suspected tax-dodgers with funds in Swiss accounts.
(AFP, 2/2/10)

2010 Feb 3, The Swiss
government approved the resettlement of two Chinese inmates at
Guantanamo as part of its commitment to help President Barack
Obama's administration close the detention center.
(AP, 2/3/10)
2010 Feb 3, "L'homme qui marche
I" (Walking Man I), a 1961 life-size bronze statue of a man by Swiss
artist Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), smashed the world record for
an art work at auction, selling in London for £65,001,250.
(AFP,
2/4/10)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alberto_Giacometti)

2010 Feb 6, A Libyan court
ordered Max Goeldi, one of two Swiss men entangled in a diplomatic
row, to pay an 800-dollar fine for illegal business activities.
Fellow businessman Rashid Hamdani was cleared last week of charges
of overstaying his visa.
(AFP, 2/6/10)

2010 Feb 7, A Libyan court
dropped a case against Rashid Hamdani, a Swiss businessman for
alleged illegal business activities, clearing the way for him to go
home after 19 months stuck in the country.
(AFP, 2/7/10)

2010 Feb 15, Libya suspended
the issuing of entry visas to European citizens apart from British
nationals. Italy's foreign ministry confirmed the measure and said
it was in retaliation for Switzerland's recent decision to publish a
blacklist of 180 Libyans banned from entering the country.
(Reuters, 2/15/10)

2010 Feb 19, The German Tax
Union said about 2,500 people in Germany have confessed to tax
evasion to avoid punishment amid a heated debate over whether
authorities should buy stolen data from Swiss bank accounts.
(AP, 2/19/10)

2010 Feb 22, In Libya Rashid
Hamdani, one of two Swiss businessmen held in Libya for 19 months
amid a diplomatic row between the two states, left for home as Max
Goeldi emerged from his country's embassy to serve 4 months in jail.
Goeldi was released on June 10 and prepared to fly home.
(AFP, 2/22/10)(AFP, 6/11/10)

2010 Feb 25, Libyan leader
Moamer Kadhafi turned up the heat in his country's dispute with
Switzerland, calling for jihad over a recent Swiss ban on the
construction of minarets.
(AFP, 2/26/10)

2010 Feb 28, In Switzerland
operators restarted the Large Hadron Collider following a winter
shutdown for improvements.
(SFC, 3/1/10, p.A2)

2010 Feb, In a reversal,
Switzerland's top court said at least US$4.6 million in Swiss bank
accounts previously awarded to charities must be returned to the
family of Duvalier. Many in Haiti considered the money to have been
stolen from public funds before Duvalier was ousted.
(AP, 1/17/11)

2010 Mar 13, The Swiss daily
Neue Zuercher Zeitung quoted Swiss Abbot Martin Werlen saying around
60 people over the last 15 years have reported being victims of
abuse by Catholic priests in Switzerland.
(AP, 3/13/10)

2010 Mar 24, Switzerland said
it will lift a travel ban on senior Libyan officials to ease
tensions in a dispute that has drawn in much of Europe. The Swiss
government expressed hope that Libya would respond by ending visa
restrictions against citizens of Switzerland and 24 other nations in
Europe's passport-free zone.
(AP, 3/24/10)

2010 Mar 25, In Switzerland the
Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council (HRC) voted 20-17 for a text
that lists the “defamation of religion" as an infringement of
liberty.
(Econ, 4/3/10, p.62)

2010 Mar 26, Germany and
Switzerland said they have reached a preliminary deal on an
agreement to exchange information on suspected tax cheats, an
important step toward defusing a long-festering irritant in their
relations.
(AP, 3/26/10)

2010 Mar 27, Libya lifted a
visa ban on citizens of 25 European countries after EU president
Spain said a Swiss-instigated visa blacklist against 188 Libyans in
those countries had been scrapped.
(Reuters, 3/28/10)

2010 Mar 28, In Switzerland an
armed gang of masked men raided the Grand Casino, packed with about
600 guests near Basel, and made off with hundreds of thousands of
dollars.
(AP, 3/28/10)

2010 Mar 30, In Switzerland
scientists cheered the historic crash of two proton beams at the
CERN Large Hadron Collider.
(SFC, 3/31/10, p.A4)

2010 Mar 31, Swiss authorities
said they could not reopen a money-laundering case against the
Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari as long as he enjoys legal
immunity.
(AP, 3/31/10)

2010 Apr 7, In Switzerland the
Solar Impulse aircraft, a pioneering Swiss bid to fly around the
world on solar energy, successfully completed its first test flight.
(AFP, 4/7/10)

2010 Apr 12, A Swiss court
rejected Hannibal Gadhafi's demand for 100,000 Swiss francs
($94,500) in reparations for the publication of a police mug shot
from his 2008 arrest in Geneva. Gadhafi was arrested in 2008 for
allegedly beating up his servants in a luxury hotel. He was later
released and charges were dropped.
(AP, 4/13/10)

2010 Apr 15, In Switzerland 3
people, members of the Italian terrorist group Il Silvestre, were
arrested with explosives in traffic two miles from an IBM nanotech
center near Zurich. The alleged eco-terrorists went on trial in
July, 2011.
(http://tinyurl.com/3hsk53d)(SFC, 7/20/11, p.A2)

2010 May 9, A plume of volcanic
ash snaked its way through southern France, Switzerland, Italy and
Germany, shutting down airports and disrupting flights across
Europe.
(AP, 5/9/10)

2010 Apr, In Switzerland a
police probe began after muddy, encrusted urns filled with human
ashes were discovered accidentally by divers near Zurich's
extravagantly wealthy "Gold Coast" only 5 miles (8 km) from the city
center. Speculation connected the urns to Dignitas, a Swiss group
that has helped hundreds of people, including Americans, Britons,
Germans and Frenchmen, take their lives in recent years. A probe
against Dignitas founder Ludwig A. Minelli in connection with the
urns was dropped July 28.
(AP, 4/28/10)(AP, 8/4/10)

2010 May 28, A Swiss man fined
for nude hiking won an appeal of the 100-franc ($87) penalty because
a court decided that the charge of "indecent behavior" did not
apply.
(AP, 5/28/10)

2010 Jun 12, In Switzerland a
bus carrying 48 Canadian tourists crashed in the canton of Valais,
killing two people and injuring at least 15 others, five of them
seriously.
(AP, 6/13/10)

2010 Jun 13, Libya said that
Switzerland has paid $1.5 million for mistreating Moammar Gadhafi's
son during his arrest there in 2008, and Switzerland expected the
return of Max Goeldi , a citizen held in Tripoli, as the countries
ended a two-year diplomatic row.
(AP, 6/13/10)

2010 Jun 15, The Swiss
parliament approved a treaty with the US that will hand thousands of
files on suspected tax cheats to US authorities, but obstacles
remain that could delay the deal for several more months.
(AP, 6/15/10)

2010 Jun 28, In Switzerland
Alfred Donath (78), a Jewish activist who helped Holocaust victims
and their heirs recover money from Swiss banks, died. Donath was the
vice president of the Swiss Federation of Jewish Communities when
Swiss banks reached an out-of-court settlement in 1998 to pay
Holocaust victims and their heirs $1.25 billion. He led the
organization from 2000 to 2008.
(AP, 6/29/10)

2010 Jul 8, In Switzerland an
experimental solar-powered plane completed its first 24-hour test
flight successfully, proving that the aircraft can collect enough
energy from the sun during the day to stay aloft all night.
(AP, 7/8/10)

2010 Jul 12, The Swiss
government declared renowned film director Roman Polanski a free man
after rejecting a US request to extradite him on a charge of having
sex in 1977 with a 13-year-old girl. The Swiss mostly blamed US
authorities for failing to provide confidential testimony about
Polanski's sentencing procedure in 1977-1978.
(AP, 7/12/10)

2010 Jul 23, Switzerland's
popular Glacier Express tourist train derailed in the Alps, killing
one person and injuring 42.
(AP, 7/23/10)
2010 Jul 23, A Dutch court
slapped a one million euro fine on Trafigura, a Swiss-based company
whose chartered ship dumped hazardous waste the Ivory Coast says
killed 17 people on its soil. It was also found guilty of concealing
what the charge sheet referred to as the "harmful nature" of the
waste on board the Probo Koala ship that arrived at the port of
Amsterdam on July 2, 2006, but was redirected to the Ivory Coast.
(AFP, 7/23/10)

2010 Aug 16, Teams from
Australia, Germany and Switzerland have set off from Geneva in
electric vehicles for what they hope will be the first carbon
neutral race around the world. The race set up by Swiss inventor
Louis Palmer will pass through 150 cities including Berlin, Moscow,
Shanghai, Los Angeles and Cancun before returning to Geneva in
January after 18,642 miles (30,000 km) on the road.
(AP, 8/16/10)

2010 Aug 28, In Switzerland
former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld hit out against the "corrupt"
US judiciary which sent him to jail even though he was the
whistleblower who led to the US tax fraud case against the bank.
“Why am I the only one in prison when I had revealed everything?"
Birkenfeld's revelations about the bank had led to US tax
authorities' offensive against UBS in 2008. In a prosecution through
US courts, the bank was forced to hand over 300 client names and pay
a 780-million-dollar fine.
(AFP, 8/28/10)

2010 Sep 22, Swiss women for
the first time captured most of the seats in the country's
seven-member executive branch, brushing aside Switzerland's history
as one of Europe's last nations to grant women full suffrage.
(AP, 9/22/10)

2010 Oct 15, Swiss engineers
smashed through the last stretch of rock to create the world's
longest tunnel (35.4 miles), The Gotthard Base rail tunnel, sparking
a national groundswell of elation over a costly, technically
difficult project that has been 60 years in the making.
(AP, 10/15/10)(SFC, 10/15/10, p.A5)

2010 Oct 20, Swiss mining giant
Xstrata said that it would spend 4.9 billion rands (710 million
dollars, 510 million euros) on expanding a ferrochrome smelter in
South Africa.
(AFP, 10/20/10)

2010 Nov 15, In Switzerland
Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev (43) warned reporters not to
cover his divorce case as his wife Elena demanded $6 billion from
the man known as the “fertilizer king" for a fortune amassed in
potash mining. According to Forbes, he was the 60th richest person
in the world in 2008.
(SFC, 11/16/10, p.A2)(http://tinyurl.com/32lymtu)

2010 Nov 16, In Switzerland a
rare pink diamond was auctioned for a record $46,158,674 to London
jeweler Laurence Graff.
(SFC, 11/17/10, p.A2)

2010 Nov 17, Scientists at CERN
reported that they have stored 38 atoms of the antimatter called
antihydrogen for a tiny fraction of a second. The first antihydrogen
atoms were made 15 years ago at CERN.
(SFC, 11/18/10, p.A9)

2010 Dec 6, In Switzerland six
world powers held their first meeting in 14 months with Iran over
its disputed nuclear program, sounding out Tehran's intentions after
it claimed to have taken a new step in making fissile material.
(AFP, 12/6/10)

2010 Dec 7, In Switzerland 6
world powers wrapped up two days of "substantive" talks with Iran on
its contentious nuclear program, with the two sides agreeing to meet
again in Istanbul next month.
(AFP, 12/7/10)

2010 Dec 18, Germany’s weekly
Der Spiegel reported that local tax authorities recovered 1.6
billion euros this year from citizens who had stashed their cash in
secret accounts in Liechtenstein and Switzerland.
(AFP, 12/18/10)

2010 Dec 22, In Rome, Italy,
all embassies were informed about a pair of package bombs that
exploded at the Swiss and Chilean embassies, injuring two people who
opened them.
(AP, 12/23/10)

2011 Jan 14, The Swiss National
Bank said it expects its loss in 2010 to reach 21 billion Swiss
francs, as the country's strengthening currency pared down the
bank's foreign currency holdings.
(AFP, 1/14/11)

2011 Jan 16, Swiss
whistleblower Rudolf Elmer is planning to handover to WikiLeaks two
CDs containing data of around 2,000 bank clients who may have been
evading taxes, according to an interview published today.
(AFP, 1/16/11)

2011 Jan 17, Angry Swiss
lawmakers called for the ouster of US diplomats suspected of
illegally spying on people around their diplomatic missions, in a
standoff over the use of counterterrorism measures.
(AP, 1/17/11)
2011 Jan 17, WikiLeaks founder
Julian Assange vowed to publish secret details of offshore accounts
after Rudolf Elmer, a Swiss banking whistleblower, handed over data
on 2,000 purportedly tax-dodging individuals and firms.
(AFP, 1/17/11)(SSFC, 1/23/11, p.A5)

2011 Jan 19, Switzerland's
federal council said it has agreed to freeze any assets of Tunisia's
ousted president and the incumbent leader of Ivory Coast.
(AP, 1/19/11)

2011 Jan 26, The World Economic
Forum opened at Davos, Switzerland. Participants wrestled with the
thorny questions surfaced by the explosion of online information and
the WikiLeaks phenomenon in particular.
(AP, 1/26/11)

2011 Jan 28, In Switzerland
Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former member of the group that created
WikiLeaks, said a new platform called OpenLeaks will allow sources
to choose specifically who they want to submit documents to
anonymously, such as to a particular news outlet. He hoped it would
be fully operational later this year.
(AP, 1/28/11)

2011 Feb 1, Switzerland blocked
Haiti ex-dictator Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier's frozen Swiss
millions under new legislation that came into force today to ease
their return to the impoverished country. The "Duvalier law" was
rushed through parliament last year to ease the restitution of
assets stolen by corrupt or greedy politicians to their home
countries.
(AFP, 2/1/11)

2011 Feb 3, In southern Italy
Matthias Kaspar Schepp (43), a Canadian-born resident of
Switzerland, was found dead by a railway station of an apparent
suicide. Swiss police said they still had no evidence of the
whereabouts of his twin daughters, Alessia and Livia (6), reported
missing on Jan 30. The girls were last seen on a ferry to the French
island of Corsica four days before their father apparently killed
himself in Italy.
(SFC, 2/8/11, p.A5)(AP, 2/9/11)

2011 Feb 10, In western
Switzerland a Roman Catholic diocese said it has suspended two
priests after allegations they sexually abused minors.
(AP, 2/10/11)

2011 Feb 11, Switzerland froze
any assets belonging to Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak or his family.
(SFC, 2/12/11, p.A5)
2011 Feb 11, In Switzerland a
twin-engine plane crashed at an altitude of 9,200 feet (2,800
meters) in the Val d'Anniviers near the border with Italy. A Swiss
pilot and a French family of 4 were killed in the crash.
(AP, 2/13/11)

2011 Feb 13, Switzerland, which
has the highest rate of suicide by firearms in Europe, voted to hold
fast to its long-standing tradition of letting citizens keep
army-issue weapons at home.
(AFP, 2/13/11)

2011 Feb 14, A Swiss court said
an Iranian man convicted of heroin trafficking will be expelled and
returned to his home country, even though the man claimed that he
could be persecuted for being homosexual.
(AFP, 2/14/11)

2011 Feb 17, Swiss media
reported that a private helicopter carrying five people has crashed
near the western Swiss ski resort of Les Diablerets.
(AP, 2/17/11)

2011 Mar 14, The Swiss
government suspended plans to replace and build new nuclear plants
pending a review of two hydrogen explosions at Japanese plants.
(AP, 3/14/11)

2011 Mar 26, In Switzerland 1
person was missing after an avalanche swept away 11 French skiers
near the southern border with Italy. 4 people were killed.
(AP, 3/26/11)

2011 Mar 31, In Switzerland a
letter bomb exploded at an office of the Swiss nuclear power
industry in the northern city of Olten, injuring two people.
(AP, 3/31/11)

2011 Apr 1, In Switzerland 3
people were killed and one was injured on after seven ski hikers
from Germany were swept away by a giant avalanche high in the
southwestern Swiss Alps.
(AFP, 4/1/11)
2011 Apr 1, Greek authorities
said an Italian radical anarchist group, the Informal Anarchist
Federation, has claimed responsibility for three mail bomb attacks
on a Greek prison, an office of the Swiss nuclear power industry and
an Italian military barracks.
(AP, 4/1/11)(SFC, 4/1/11, p.A2)

2011 Apr 14, Glencore, a
Swiss-based mining company, said it would list 20% of its shares in
London and Hong Kong in an IPO that will raise as much as $11
billion.
(Econ, 4/16/11, p.68)

2011 May 2, The Swiss
government said it has identified potential assets belonging to
Libya’s Moammar Khadafy and his entourage amounting to $415 million.
Assets of $473 million were also found linked to Egypt’s Hosni
Mubarak and $69 million to Tunisia’s Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali.
(SFC, 5/3/11, p.AA2)

2011 May 13, Pioneering Swiss
solar-powered aircraft Solar Impulse landed in Brussels after a
12-hour flight from Switzerland, the futuristic aircraft's first
international sortie.
(AP, 5/13/11)

2011 May 17, The Swiss-based
World Health Organization said it will cut $1 billion from its next
budget because of financial problems among rich donor nations and
the exchange rate for the weak US dollar.
(AP, 5/17/11)

2011 May 18, The Swiss
government passed a measure restricting arms sales to Syria and
freezing the assets and banning the travel to Switzerland of 13
senior Syrian officials.
(AP, 5/18/11)

2011 May 25, The Swiss
government said it will decommission all its nuclear power plants.
(AP, 5/25/11)

2011 Jun 27, A Swiss man (62)
appeared in court accused of drugging and sexually abusing some 50
girls at a camp and a private boarding school between 1996 and his
arrest in 2007. On July 1 the man was sentenced to 13 years in
prison and ordered to pay his victims 65,000 Swiss francs ($77,000).
(AP, 6/27/11)(AP, 7/1/11)
2011 Jun 27, In Geneva more
than 80 states began meeting for the first four-day intercessional
meeting on the Convention on Cluster Munitions to advance their
commitments to a world free of cluster bombs. During the meeting
Thailand and Cambodia indicated their intention to join in the near
future.
(AFP,
7/1/11)(www.stopclustermunitions.org/news/?id=3086)

2011 Jul 14, Switzerland
suspended imports of some seeds, beans and sprouts from Egypt, after
the EU blamed Egyptian fenugreek seeds for E.coli outbreaks in
Germany and France. The temporary ban would expire in October 31,
2011, in line with the EU's suspension.
(AFP, 7/14/11)

2011 Jul 17, In Switzerland the
son of an American UN diplomat was attacked by up to a dozen
assailants in Geneva, who beat him with metal rods and attempted to
throw him into the river Rhone before a passing cyclist raised the
alarm.
(AP, 8/15/11)

2011 Aug 23, The Geneva-based
Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria said it is
lifting the freeze on funding to China to ensure AIDS work in the
country continues while it works with government officials,
representatives from United Nations' agencies and private groups to
resolve the dispute.
(AP, 8/23/11)

2011 Sep 6, The Swiss franc
dropped sharply after the country's central bank pegged it against
the euro.
(AP, 9/6/11)

2011 Sep 15, British police
arrested Kweku Adoboli (31) in London after the rogue trader at
Swiss bank UBS lost an estimated $2.3 billion in unauthorized
trades. On Sep 24 UBS announced the resignation of CEO Oswald
Gruebel.
(AFP, 9/15/11)(AFP, 9/16/11)(SSFC, 9/25/11,
p.A15)

2011 Sep 22, It was reported
that CERN physicists have found that tiny particles called neutrinos
are making a 454-mile (730-km) underground trip faster than they
should, more quickly, in fact, than light could do. If the results
are confirmed, they could throw much of modern physics into
upheaval. Researchers in 2012 published papers that refuted the
faster than light neutrino travel.
(http://tinyurl.com/3k9puhj)(SFC, 9/23/11,
p.A5)(Econ, 3/24/12, p.82)

2011 Oct 6, Britain and
Switzerland signed an agreement to tax money kept by British
residents in secret Swiss bank accounts, a move which could net the
British government billions of pounds and help Swiss banking clean
up its image. The deal, which must still be approved by the
parliaments of both countries, should come into force in 2013.
(Reuters, 10/6/11)

2011 Oct 14, A British pilot
(29) and his passenger (40) died in the crash of their small plane
in Switzerland.
(AFP, 10/15/11)

2011 Oct 23, Switzerland held
national elections. Citizens were poised to hand nationalists an
unprecedented 30 percent voice, following voting dominated by
concerns about immigration, nuclear power and the economy.
(AP, 10/23/11)

2011 Oct 25, In Geneva US and
North Korean officials concluded their two-day talks about
Pyongyang's nuclear program. Top US envoy Stephen Bosworth expressed
confidence about the prospects of restarting long-stalled nuclear
negotiations after two days of "very positive" talks with North
Korea.
(AFP, 10/25/11)

2011 Oct 31, Zimbabwe state
media said President Robert Mugabe has warned Switzerland he would
"reciprocate" after his wife and top officials were denied visas to
attend a UN meeting in that country.
(AFP, 10/31/11)

2011 Nov 30, Amid fears of a
eurozone collapse, central banks of the United States, the eurozone,
Britain, Japan, Canada and Switzerland said that they would cut the
cost of providing dollars to banks. The move pushed the DJIA up 490
points, its biggest gain since March 2009.
(AFP, 12/1/11)(SFC, 12/1/11, p.D1)

2011 Dec 13, Scientists at
CERN, Switzerland, announced the possible discovery of the Higgs
boson, a fundamental particle proposed by British researcher Peter
Higgs in 1964.
(Econ, 12/17/11, p.137)

2011 Alice Odiot authored
"Commodities: Switzerland's Most Dangerous Business." It looks at
the social and environmental impact on Zambia and the Mopani Copper
Mines owned by Swiss giant Glencore.
(AP, 9/20/11)

2012 Jan 9, Swiss National Bank
chief Philipp Hildebrand resigned acknowledging he could not prove
his innocence amid a public uproar over his private currency deals.
Dollar swaps last year netted him and his wife tens of thousands in
profits.
(SFC, 1/10/12, p.A2)

2012 Jan 24, The Coryton
refinery in Essex, one of Britain's largest oil refineries halted
sales, casting doubt over the future of 1,000 jobs and putting
petrol supplies at risk. Petroplus, its Swiss owner, said it would
file for insolvency. It had bought the refinery from BP in 2007.
(AFP, 1/24/12)

2012 Jan 27, Fitch ratings
downgraded the debt of Belgium, Cyprus, Italy, Slovenia and Spain
even as European finance chiefs gathering in Davos sought to
reassure global business leaders that Europe is on track to solve
its debt crises.
(SFC, 1/27/12, p.A4)

2012 Jan 28, At Davos,
Switzerland, 3 topless Ukrainian protesters were detained while
trying to break into an invitation-only gathering of international
CEOs and political leaders to call attention to the needs of the
world's poor. Separately, demonstrators from the Occupy movement
marched to the edge of the gathering.
(AP, 1/28/12)

2012 Feb 2, The US Justice
Department said it has indicted Wegelin, the oldest Swiss private
bank, on charges that it enabled wealthy Americans to evade taxes on
at least $1.2 billion hidden in offshore bank accounts. In January,
2013, a reduced Wegelin pleaded guilty in a New York court to
allowing more than 100 American citizens to hide $1.2 billion from
the Internal Revenue Service over a 10-year period.
(Reuters,
2/3/12)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wegelin_%26_Co.)

2012 Feb 9, Swiss news reported
that Hafez Makhlouf, a cousin of Syria's President Bashar Assad, has
won a legal bid to unfreeze euro3 million ($4 million) held in bank
accounts in Switzerland, overturning a last-ditch effort by Swiss
prosecutors to block the release of the funds on suspicion of money
laundering.
(AP, 2/9/12)

2012 Feb 17, Swiss authorities
said they have confiscated $6 trillion in counterfeit US bonds at
the request of Italian prosecutors. In Italy eight people were
arrested across the country and placed under investigation for fraud
and other crimes. The bonds, carrying the false date of issue of
1934, had been transported in 2007 from Hong Kong to Zurich, where
they were transferred to a Swiss trust.
(AP, 2/17/12)

2012 Mar 13, In Switzerland a
bus carrying Belgian students returning from a ski holiday crashed
into a wall in a tunnel near Sierre, killing 22 Belgian 12-year-olds
and six adults. Another 24 students were hospitalized with injuries.
(AP, 3/14/12)

2012 Mar 15, In Pakistan Swiss
couple David Och and Daniela Widmer, held captive for nearly a year
by the Taliban, turned up at an army post close to the Afghan
border, claiming to have escaped from their captors. Taliban
commanders said a ransom was paid in exchange for their release.
(AP, 3/15/12)

2012 Mar 27, Swiss authorities
said five out of every 1,000 deaths in Switzerland now involve
assisted suicide, with women more likely to die this way than men.
(AP, 3/27/12)

2012 Apr 20, Switzerland said
it has revised a tax pact agreed with Britain last year and will
offer it a higher rate of withholding tax, after Germany earlier
this month succeeded in obtaining more favorable terms in a similar
deal with the Swiss government.
(Reuters, 4/20/12)

2012 May 24, The jumbo jet-size
Solar Impulse, an experimental solar-powered airplane, took off from
Switzerland on its first transcontinental flight, aiming to reach
North Africa next week.
(AP, 5/24/12)

2012 Jun 17, Swiss voters
decided that they have enough democracy already, dealing a heavy
defeat to a proposal to hold more referendums on international
treaties.
(AP, 6/17/12)

2012 Jun 30, In Geneva
representatives of global and regional powers accepted a UN-brokered
plan calling for creation of a transitional national unity
government in Syria. But at Russia's insistence, the compromise
agreement left the door open to Assad being part of the interim
administration.
(AP, 6/30/12)(AP, 7/1/12)

2012 Jul 4, The Swiss
government temporarily blocked all arms shipments to the United Arab
Emirates after a newspaper published a photograph indicating that a
Swiss-made hand grenade was found in Syria. The hand grenade
appearing in a photograph published July 1 by Zurich weekly
Sonntagszeitung came from a shipment of 225,162 hand grenades by
Swiss-based RUAG Holding AG to the United Arab Emirates in 2003.
(AP, 7/5/12)
2012 Jul 4, Physicists at CERN,
Switzerland, said they had found a new sub-atomic particle
consistent with the elusive Higgs boson which is believed to confer
mass.. “We have discovered a boson, and now we have to determine
what kind of boson it is." Finding the Higgs would validate the
Standard Model, a theory which identifies the building blocks for
matter and the particles that convey fundamental forces.
(AFP, 7/4/12)

2012 Aug 23, In Switzerland the
Green Climate Fund, which aims to channel $100 billion a year in aid
to poor countries, selected as leaders Zaheer Fakir, head of
international relations for South Africa's environment agency, and
Ewen McDonald, deputy head of Australia's international development
agency.
(AP, 8/23/12)

2012 Aug 30, Swiss authorities
said a self-styled healer has been indicted by a Swiss court on
charges that he intentionally infected 16 people with HIV, the virus
that causes AIDS, in cases (2001-2005) going back more than a
decade.
(AP, 8/30/12)

2012 Oct 27, In Greece Costas
Vaxevanis, publisher of Hot Doc magazine, printed a list of 2,059
Greek depositors at a bank in Switzerland. The list, dating from
2007, was allegedly given to the Greek government by French
officials in 2010. Vaxevanis was arrested, faced trial and was
acquitted. On Oct 8, 2013, he appeared in court again to stand trial
again for violating privacy laws.
(SFC, 10/29/12, p.A2)(Econ, 11/3/12,
p.54)(Reuters, 10/8/13)

2012 Nov 13, In Switzerland
Christie's auctioned off the Archduke Joseph Diamond for nearly
$21.5 million, a world auction record price per carat for a
colorless diamond.
(AP, 11/13/12)

2012 Nov 20, Former UBS trader
Kweku Adoboli (32) was convicted and sentenced to seven years in
jail for the biggest fraud in British history, which resulted in a
loss of $2.3 billion for the Swiss bank. Adoboli was released on
parole in 2015 after serving about half his sentence.
(Reuters, 11/20/12)(AP, 6/24/15)

2012 Dec 19, Switzerland's UBS
AG agreed to pay some $1.5 billion in fines to international
regulators following a probe into the rigging of a key global
interest rate.
(AP, 12/19/12)

2012 Swiss authorities arrested
Erwin Sperisen, a former police chief in Guatemala, for planning and
directing operations to kill detainees during his tenure from
2004-2007. Sperisen had dual Swiss and Guatemalan nationality and in
2014 was sentenced in Geneva to life in prison.
(SFC, 6/7/14, p.A2)

2013 Jan 2, In Switzerland a
man armed with an old military rifle and a handgun shot and killed
three women and wounded two men in the village of Daillon. Police
shot and wounded the suspect after he threatened to also shoot
officers.
(AP, 1/3/13)

2013 Jan 13, In Geneva
delegates from more than 130 nations began a final round of
negotiations on the creation of the first legally binding treaty to
reduce mercury emissions.
(SFC, 1/14/13, p.A2)

2013 Jan 19, In Geneva more
than 140 nations adopted the first legally-binding international
treaty aimed at reducing mercury emissions, capping four years of
negotiations on how to set limits on the use of a highly toxic
metal. 50 nations must ratify it before it comes into force, which
officials said they would expect to happen within about three to
four years.
(AP, 1/19/13)

2013 Jan 26, In Switzerland 3
women from Ukrainian feminist activist group Femen, angry over
sexism and male domination of the world economy, ripped off their
shirts and tried to force their way into a gathering of corporate
elites in Davos.
(AP, 1/26/13)

2013 Jan 28, Britain received
an initial 340 million pounds from the Swiss government as part of a
deal to tackle tax evasion that the government expects will net it
some 5 billion pounds over the next six years.
(Reuters, 1/29/13)

2013 Feb 12, IOC leaders
meeting in Switzerland dropped wrestling from the Olympic program, a
surprise decision that removes one of the oldest Olympic sports from
the 2020 Games.
(AP, 2/12/13)

2013 Feb 14, The US Treasury
Department said that Switzerland and the United States have signed a
pact to make Swiss banks disclose information about US
account-holders.
(Reuters, 2/14/13)

2013 Feb 27, In Switzerland a
longtime employee (42) opened fire at a wood-processing company in
Menznau, leaving 3 people dead, including the assailant.
(AP, 2/27/13)

2013 May 8, Belgian, French and
Swiss authorities arrested at least 31 people in a sweep for robbers
who pulled off a diamond theft on Feb 18 with clockwork precision at
Brussels Airport.
(AP, 5/8/13)

2013 May 14, The European Court
of Human Rights found that Swiss laws on passive assisted suicide
are unclear and need revising to clarify when people are entitled to
a medical prescription for a lethal dose of drugs.
(AP, 5/14/13)

2013 May 16, Heinrich Rohrer
(79), Swiss physicist and Nobel Prize winner (1986), died in
Switzerland. He is regarded as the father of nanotechnology.
(Econ, 6/1/13, p.90)

2013 May 29, The Swiss
government announced that it will let banks circumvent the country's
strict client secrecy laws as part of an effort to end a
long-running tax evasion dispute with the United States.
(AP, 5/29/13)

2013 Jun 2, Authorities in
parts of central Europe issued disaster warnings and scrambled to
reinforce flood defenses as rivers swelled by days of heavy rain
threatened to burst their banks. Several people have died or were
missing in the floods in Germany, the Czech Republic and
Switzerland.
(AP, 6/2/13)

2013 Jun 26, In Switzerland
financier Marc Rich (b.1934) died of a stroke at a hospital in
Lucerne. During the Arab oil embargo of the 1970s, Rich used his
Middle East contacts to purchase crude oil from Iran and Iraq and
made a fortune selling it to American companies.
(AP, 6/26/13)

2013 Jul 19, In Switzerland the
world's top particle physics lab said it had measured the decay time
of a particle known as a Bs (B sub s) meson into two other
fundamental particles called muons, which are much heavier than but
similar to electrons. It was observed as part of the reams of data
coming from CERN's $10 billion Large Hadron Collider, the world's
largest atom smasher.
(AP, 7/19/13)

2013 Jul 25, In Switzerland a
member of the notorious "Pink Panther" jewel thief gang escaped from
prison after accomplices rammed a gate and overpowered guards with
bursts from their AK-47s. Milan Poparic (34) fled with fellow inmate
Adrian Albrecht (52) from the Orbe prison in the western canton
(state) of Vaud.
(AP, 7/26/13)

2013 Jul 29, In Switzerland two
trains collided head-on late today, injuring 26 people and killing
the driver of one at Granges-près-Marnand in the canton of Vaud.
(Reuters, 7/29/13)

2013 Aug 14, In Switzerland
British stuntman Mark Sutton (42) was killed during a gathering
organized by Online extreme sports involving 20 wingsuit pilots who
were filmed as they jumped from helicopters.
(AP, 8/15/13)

2013 Aug 26, Zurich,
Switzerland, launched publicly funded, drive-in, open wooden garages
to make prostitution less of a public nuisance and safer for women.
(AP, 8/26/13)

2013 Sep 10, Lawmakers in
Switzerland, where prostitution is legal, agreed to make it a
criminal act to pay for sex with anyone who is under 18 years old.
(AP, 9/10/13)

2013 Sep 22, Switzerland voted
overwhelmingly to keep military conscription, the 3rd time its
citizens had rejected an attempt to reconstitute an institution
regarded by many Swiss as a national glue.
(Reuters, 9/22/13)
2013 Sep 22, Switzerland's
Italian-speaking region was on course to ban the wearing of a
full-face veil, projected results from a referendum showed.
(AP, 9/22/13)

2013 Sep 27, The Swiss
government urged voters to reject a Nov 24 proposal to limit monthly
executive pay to no more than what the company's lowest-paid staff
earn in a year, saying it could hurt the attractiveness of
Switzerland as a business destination.
(Reuters, 9/27/13)

2013 Oct 10, Iraq's prime
minister said his country has signed a $6 billion contract with
Swiss company Satarem to build and run an oil refinery in the
southern province of Maysan.
(AP, 10/11/13)

2013 Oct 18, Swiss customs
agents said they have seized one million fake tablets of
anti-anxiety drug Xanax at the Zurich airport, which were destined
for Egypt. The counterfeit tablets, packed in four crates and
weighing 400kg, had originated in China, according to Swissmedic,
the Swiss Agency for Therapeutic Products.
(AFP, 10/18/13)

2013 Oct 23, Swiss-based
petrochemical firm Ineos said it would close its Grangemouth plant
in Scotland with the loss of hundreds of jobs after failing to
resolve a bitter labor dispute.
(AFP, 10/23/13)
2013 Oct 23, A Swiss Air Force
F/A-18 jet went down near a military airport in Alpnach in the Lake
Lucerne region.
(AP, 10/23/13)

2013 Nov 7, Swiss scientists
confirmed that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat ingested lethal
radioactive polonium before his death in 2004 and had high levels of
it in his body that could not have been accidental. Palestinian
officials have alleged from the start that Israel poisoned Arafat.
(AP, 11/7/13)

2013 Nov 13, In Switzerland an
enormous diamond known as "The Pink Star" sold for more than $83
million at auction in Geneva. Sotheby's said the sale is the highest
price ever paid for a gemstone at auction.
(AP, 11/14/13)

2013 Nov 26, In Switzerland the
director-general of the World Trade Organization said negotiators
have failed to craft the first global trade deal in more than a
decade, which could have given the world economy a $1 trillion
boost.
(AP, 11/26/13)

2013 Dec 18, The Swiss
government said it has decided to keep 760 million Swiss francs
($858 million) in Egyptian and Tunisian assets frozen for three more
years.
(AP, 12/18/13)

2013 Dec 22, NY-based Tiffany
& Co. said it was ordered to pay Swatch Group AG about 402
million Swiss francs ($449 million) in compensation over a
contractual dispute. The Netherlands Arbitration Institute also
required Tiffany to pay more than $9 million for the Swiss
watchmaker's legal fees and the cost of arbitration.
(AP, 12/23/13)

2013 Swiss novelist Joel Dicker
authored “The Truth about the Harry Quebert Affair." In 2014 the
popular novel was published in English.
(Econ, 4/19/14, p.78)

2014 Jan 5, In southern
Switzerland 4 skiers were killed and another was in a critical
condition after a series of avalanches hit the Alps.
(AFP, 1/5/14)

2014 Jan 22, In Switzerland
peace talks intended to carve a path out of Syria's civil war got
off to a rocky start in Montreux as a bitter clash over President
Bashar Assad's future threatened to collapse the negotiations even
before they really begin. On Jan 24 the talks moved to Geneva.
(AP, 1/22/14)(Econ, 1/25/14, p.37)

2014 Jan 23, Iran’s President
Hassan Rouhani told the World Economic Forum in Davos that Tehran
was ready to help create a new multilateral body tasked with
stabilising global energy supplies. Rouhani also called for free and
fair elections in Syria, saying it would respect any outcome.
(AFP, 1/23/14)(AP, 1/23/14)

2014 Jan 25, In Switzerland the
first face-to-face meeting between Syria's government and the
opposition hoping to overthrow President Bashar Assad ended after
barely a half-hour, with the two sides facing each other silently as
a UN mediator laid groundwork for talks.
(AP, 1/25/14)

2014 Jan 26, Syrians on
opposite sides of their country's civil war tried again to find
common ground in Geneva. The UN mediator said the two sides have
reached a deal to allow women and children to leave Homs, a city
under government siege for more than a year.
(AP, 1/26/14)

2014 Jan 27, In Geneva the
first meeting meant to discuss the issue of a Syrian transitional
government broke up less than an hour after it began following a
tense session that one delegate described as "a dialogue of the
deaf." UN envoy Brahimi broke up the meeting and was scheduled to
meet with both sides separately later in the day.
(AP, 1/27/14)

2014 Feb 10, Peace talks
between the Syrian government and the opposition resumed in Geneva.
(CSM, 2/10/14)

2014 Feb 16, Switzerland told
the newest EU member, Croatia, that it will not be able to sign a
labor market pact as planned on July 1, following a shock referendum
vote in favor of immigration curbs.
(Reuters, 2/16/14)

2014 Feb 17, Ethiopian Airlines
co-pilot Hailemedehin Abera Tagegn (31) locked his colleague out of
the cockpit, hijacked a Rome-bound plane and landed in Geneva, all
in an attempt to seek asylum in Switzerland. On March 16, 2015,
Tagegn was convicted in absentia by Ethiopia’s high court.
(AP, 2/17/14)(AFP, 2/17/14)

2014 Feb 28, Switzerland,
Austria and Liechtenstein moved to freeze assets and bank accounts
of up to 20 Ukrainians including ousted president Viktor Yanukovich
and his son, after Ukraine's new rulers said billions had gone
missing.
(Reuters, 2/28/14)

2014 Mar 10, Switzerland froze
the assets and bank accounts of nine more Ukrainians, including
another son of ousted president Viktor Yanukovich and the son of a
former prime minister, all of whom are suspected of human rights
abuses and misuse of state funds.
(Reuters, 3/10/14)
2014 Mar 10, The office of
Switzerland's attorney general said its criminal investigation into
former Texas tycoon R. Allen Stanford's massive Ponzi scheme has
concluded that some of the victims' money was laundered in Swiss
accounts.
(AP, 3/10/14)

2014 Mar 12, Swiss authorities
said they have opened a money laundering investigation into Gulnara
Karimova, the eldest daughter of Uzbekistan's Pres. Islam Karimov,
related to the country's telecommunications market.
(AFP, 3/12/14)

2014 Mar 28, Russia said
Switzerland has imposed restrictions on military exports to Russia
over events in Ukraine which were counterproductive and not in line
with the country's policy of neutrality.
(Reuters, 3/28/14)

2014 Mar 31, Switzerland's
competition regulator named eight global banks it is investigating
for possible manipulation of foreign exchange rates. It cited the
two largest Swiss banks, UBS and Credit Suisse, along with Zurich
Cantonal Bank, Julius Baer and JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup, Barclays
Bank and Royal Bank of Scotland Group.
(AP, 3/31/14)

2014 Mar, Swiss authorities
arrested three Iraqi citizens who were suspected of providing
support to Islamic State and planning an attack in Europe. The
arrests were first reported in September and confirmed by the
government in October.
(Reuters, 10/31/14)

2014 Apr 2, The Swiss
government said it has decided not to adopt European Union sanctions
against 33 people in connection with Russia's annexation of Crimea,
but will prevent them from using Switzerland to get around the visa
bans and asset freezes.
(AP, 4/2/14)

2014 Apr 7, Swiss-based Holcim
and its French counterpart, Lafarge, two of the world's largest
suppliers of building materials, announced plans for a merger of
equals.
(AP, 4/7/14)

2014 Apr 11, The Swiss
government said the Palestinians can join the Geneva Conventions
governing the rules of war and military occupations, twenty-five
years after they made their first bid for membership.
(AP, 4/11/14)
2014 Apr 11, Switzerland said
it will hand over to Tunisia $40 million (29 million euros) stashed
in Swiss bank accounts by the family of ousted dictator Zine El
Abidine Ben Ali. Investigations into the origin of $28.5 million
remaining continued.
(AFP, 4/11/14)

2014 Apr 13, Glencore, based in
Switzerland, said it has signed an agreement to sell its entire
interest in the Peruvian Las Bambas copper mine to a consortium led
by MMG Ltd., a mining company controlled by state-owned China
Minmetals Nonferrous Metals Co. Ltd.
(AP, 4/14/14)

2014 Apr 30, Switzerland said
it will grant workers from Croatia access to its labor market in a
bid to kickstart treaty negotiations with the EU that were frozen
after Swiss voters approved curbs on immigration.
(Reuters, 4/30/14)

2014 May 7, Switzerland’s
Kunstmuseum Bern said that it has been named as the unrestricted and
unfettered heir of German art collector Cornelius Gurlitt, who a day
earlier.
(SFC, 5/8/14, p.A2)(AFP, 5/13/14)
2014 May 7, Russia’s President
Vladimir Putin urged that a planned May 11 referendum on autonomy in
southeast Ukraine be postponed. In a meeting with Swiss president
Didier Burkhalter, Putin also called on Ukraine's military to halt
all operations against pro-Russia activists who have seized
government buildings and police stations across at least a dozen
towns in eastern Ukraine.
(AP, 5/7/14)

2014 May 19, A Swiss court
ordered Dmitry Rybolovlev of Monaco to pay his ex-wife, Elena
Rybolovlev, 4,020,555,987.80 Swiss francs to settle their divorce
after a 6-year legal fight. The Russian billionaire had made his
fortune in potash mining. Forbes estimated his worth at $8.8
billion.
(SFC, 5/20/14, p.A2)
2014 May 19, Swiss-based Credit
Suisse pleaded guilty to a criminal charge of having helped its
customers elude America’s tax authorities. The bank was fined $2.8
billion.
(Econ, 5/24/14, p.65)

2014 Jun 2, The Swiss-made
Solar Impulse 2 airplane made a successful inaugural flight as its
makers prepare for what they hope will be the first round-the-world
solar flight.
(AP, 6/2/14)

2014 Jun 12, Swiss authorities
said they have arrested Swiss winemaker Dominique Giroud, a spy and
two others on charges of hacking the computers of at least two
journalists.
(AP, 6/12/14)

2014 Aug 6, In Switzerland a
man arrested a day earlier, for suspected involvement in the theft
and leaking of a medical file on injured ex-Formula One champion
Michael Schumacher, was found hanged in his cell.
(AFP, 8/6/14)

2014 Aug 24, Swiss
pharmaceutical giant Roche said it is buying InterMune of Brisbane,
Ca., for $8.3 billion in an all cash transaction.
(SFC, 8/25/14, p.D1)

2014 Aug 27, Switzerland said
Russian banks will require approval to issue long-term financial
instruments in Switzerland, as it detailed measures to ensure it
does not become a place for individuals or funds to avoid European
sanctions on Moscow.
(Reuters, 8/27/14)

2014 Sep 4, In Switzerland some
200 experts huddled in Geneva to debate experimental treatments for
the Ebola virus as the world's worst-ever outbreak raged in west
Africa.
(AFP, 9/4/14)

2014 Sep 18, In Switzerland
some 200 companies pledged to create new work and training
opportunities for Europe's young jobseekers, of which one out of
four is unemployed.
(AP, 9/18/14)

2014 Sep 30, The Swiss-based
WWF issued a report saying about 3,000 species of wildlife around
the world have seen their numbers plummet far worse than previously
thought.
(AP, 9/30/14)

2014 Oct 2, In France a
helicopter that took off from neighboring Switzerland crashed in the
yard of a home in eastern France, killing at least 5 people in the
town of Bart.
(AP, 10/2/14)

2014 Nov 3, In Switzerland the
bodies of 3 Portuguese citizens were discovered near a train station
in the Swiss Alps town of Wilderswill, amid reports of a
murder-suicide.
(AFP, 11/3/14)

2014 Nov 16, On the
Italian-Swiss border at least 4 people were killed as landslides
triggered by torrential rain slammed into houses and buildings on
either side of the border.
(AFP, 11/16/14)

2014 Nov 19, In Switzerland
scientists at CERN, the world's largest smasher, said they have
discovered two new subatomic particles never seen before that could
widen our understanding of the universe. The new particles, which
were predicted to exist, are both baryons made from three quarks
bound together by a strong force.
(AP, 11/19/14)

2014 Nov 24, Switzerland’s
Kunstmuseum Bern agreed to accept a priceless collection of
long-hidden art from the late German collector Cornelius Gurlitt,
saying it will work closely with Germany to make sure that any
pieces looted by the Nazis are returned to their Jewish owners.
(AP, 11/24/14)

2014 Dec 11, Swiss authorities
charged Herve Falciani, a fugitive banking analyst, with data theft
in what is considered to be one of the biggest security breaches in
the country's often-secretive banking sector. He has been accused of
stealing stole information between 2006 and 2007 relating to 24,000
customers of the Swiss division of HSBC.
(AP, 12/11/14)

2014 Dec 17, In Geneva the
international community delivered a stinging rebuke to Israel's
settlement construction in the West Bank and east Jerusalem, saying
the practice violates its responsibilities as an occupying power in
a declaration adopted by consensus among 126 of the 196 parties to
the Fourth Geneva Convention.
(AP, 12/17/14)
2014 Dec 17, The United States
slapped sanctions on Dutch and Swiss oil trading firms for their
dealings with the Syrian government. This put Netherlands-based
Staroil B.V. as well as two Swiss-based firms, Rixo International
Trading Ltd and Bluemarine SA, on its list of sanctioned entities,
which effectively cuts them off from the US financial system.
(AP, 12/17/14)

2014 Dec 18, Switzerland sought
to prevent the Swiss franc from breaching upper limits imposed on
the currency by introducing negative interest rates on commercial
bank deposits following the fallout of the slide in the Russian
ruble.
(AP, 12/18/14)

2015 Jan 15, Switzerland
ditched an increasingly expensive policy to limit the export-sapping
rise of the Swiss franc — a decision that propelled the currency a
whopping 30 percent higher against the euro within minutes.
(AP, 1/15/15)

2015 Jan 19, Oxfam
International said in a report released as the World Economic Forum
begins in Davos, Switzerland, that the richest 1 percent of the
population will own more than half the world's wealth by 2016.
(AP, 1/19/15)

2015 Jan 21, In Switzerland the
annual 3-day World Economic Forum (WEF) opened in Davos. The theme
this year was “the new global context".
(Econ, 1/17/15, p.66)
2015 Jan 21, In Switzerland
Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko courted European support World
Economic Forum in Davos against what he says are 9,000 Russian
troops occupying 7 percent of his nation's territory.
(AP, 1/21/15)

2015 Jan 23, In Davos,
Switzerland, political and financial leaders at the World Economic
Forum began campaigning in earnest for twin global accords aimed at
cooling the planet and easing the suffering of multitudes.
(AP, 1/23/15)

2015 Feb 1, Swiss police said
11 people have died in off-piste skiing accidents in the Swiss Alps
despite repeated avalanche warnings over the past four days.
(AFP, 2/1/15)

2015 Feb 13, Meeting in Geneva
almost 200 countries agreed a draft text for a deal to fight climate
change, but put off hard choices about narrowing down a vast range
of options for limiting a damaging rise in temperatures.
(Reuters, 2/13/15)

2015 Feb 18, Swiss authorities
raided the offices of British banking giant HSBC's Swiss unit as
part of a money laundering probe into the bank that has been accused
of helping clients to dodge millions of dollars in taxes.
(AFP, 2/18/15)

2015 Feb 20, In Switzerland two
trains slammed into each other near the city of Zurich, tipping over
carriages and injuring at least six people.
(AFP, 2/20/15)

2015 Feb 27, Switzerland became
the first country to submit a pledge to the UN for a new global
climate deal, vowing to cut its greenhouse gas emission in half by
2030 compared with 1990 levels.
(SFC, 2/28/15, p.A2)

2015 Mar 3, Australia and
Switzerland signed an accord in Canberra aimed at cracking down on
tax evaders.
(AP, 3/3/15)

2015 Mar 9, The Solar Impulse 2
aircraft set off from Abu Dhabi on a bid to make the first
round-the-world tour. Swiss pilot Andre Borschberg (63) will trade
flying the Si2 with Bertrand Piccard. The epic journey was scheduled
to spread over five months, with a total flight time of around 25
days.
(AFP, 3/9/15)(SFC, 3/9/15, p.A2)

2015 Mar 17, Swiss officials
said they are returning to Nigeria some $380 million linked to the
country's former dictator, Gen. Sani Abacha. The money, confiscated
on the basis that the Abacha family was a criminal organization,
will now be returned to Nigeria under World Bank supervision.
(AP, 3/17/15)

2015 Mar 19, Switzerland signed
a preliminary agreement with the European Union that will make it
much harder for the 28-nation bloc's citizens to evade taxes by
hiding money in Swiss vaults.
(AP, 3/19/15)

2015 Mar 20, Europol, the
European Union's policy agency, said that raids earlier this week in
Austria, Cyprus, Slovenia and Switzerland led to 26 arrests and the
identification of 14 possible victims of the smugglers. The raids of
brothels and restaurants targeted Chinese criminal networks that
reportedly smuggled people to the continent.
(AP, 3/20/15)

2015 Apr 2, In Switzerland
negotiators reached a framework for a nuclear accord with Iran. US
President Barack Obama hailed it as an “historic understanding," but
senior global diplomats cautioned that hard work lies ahead to
strike a final deal.
(Reuters, 4/3/15)

2015 Apr 5, In Switzerland CERN
said the world's largest particle smasher has restarted after a
two-year upgrade that will allow physicists to explore uncharted
corners of the matter that makes up the universe.
(AFP, 4/5/15)

2015 May 9, In Switzerland a
gunman (36) killed 3 relatives and a neighbor in a late-night
rampage in in Wuerenlingen before turning his weapon on himself.
(Reuters, 5/10/15)(SFC, 5/11/15, p.A2)

2015 May 20, CERN scientists
operating the world's biggest particle collider set a new energy
record ahead of the massive machine's full restart in June. The
Large Hadron Collider is located in a 27-km (16.8-mile) tunnel
beneath the Swiss-French border.
(AP, 5/21/15)

2015 May 23, In Geneva
delegates from the WHO's 194 member states approved the creation of
a $100 million fund to help the World Health Organization respond
rapidly to emergencies.
(AP, 5/23/15)

2015 May 27, Swiss police
detained seven FIFA leaders in a dawn raid as part of a twin
corruption inquiry that rocked world football's governing body two
days before its leader Sepp Blatter seeks a new term. 14 people were
indicted in a separate US graft probe. Three Argentine officials
were included in the US indictment.
(AFP, 5/27/15)(SSFC, 5/31/15, p.A4)(Econ,
5/30/15, p.14)

2015 May 29, In Switzerland
Sepp Blatter was re-elected president of FIFA for a fifth term after
his only challenger conceded defeat in an election overshadowed by
allegations of rampant corruption in world soccer.
(Reuters, 5/29/15)

2015 May 31, Swiss pilot Andre
Borschberg took off from Nanjing, China, for a six day flight to
Hawaii in the solar powered Solar Impulse. This was the 7th of
twelve flights in the round the world journey. Borschberg made an
unscheduled stop in Japan on June 1 to wait out bad weather.
(SFC, 6/1/15, p.A2)(SFC, 6/2/15, p.A2)

2015 Jun 2, In Switzerland Sepp
Blatter, recently re-elected president of FIFA for a fifth term,
announced that he would resign. Blatter said he would remain
president until a new election can be set up, sometime between
December and March.
(AP, 6/3/15)

2015 Jun 3, In Switzerland the
upper house of parliament voted through a bill dubbed "Lex FIFA",
aimed at cracking down on corruption inside international
organizations.
(AFP, 6/3/15)

2015 Jun 11, In Switzerland
FIFA's top spokesman left his job, hours after Sepp Blatter was
urged to do the same by the European Parliament.
(AP, 6/11/15)

2015 Jun 12, Journalist Emin
Huseynov flew out of Azerbaijan on the plane of Swiss diplomat
Didier Burkhalter (35). The opposition journalist had been
sheltering for 10 months at the Swiss embassy in Baku.
(AFP, 6/13/15)

2015 Jun 22, Bosnia asked
Switzerland to hand over Naser Oric, the wartime Muslim defender of
Srebrenica, and not extradite him to Serbia. The row that threatened
to overshadow the 20th anniversary of the massacre. Oric stood trial
at a UN court in The Hague for crimes against Bosnian Serbs and was
acquitted of all charges in 2008.
(Reuters, 6/22/15)

2015 Jun 25, Swiss authorities
approved the extradition of Naser Oric, the wartime Bosnian
commander of Srebrenica, to his home country rather than to Serbia.
Oric agreed to be extradited to Bosnia.
(AP, 6/25/15)